In a shocking incident in Jaipur on Monday, a Muslim mob hurled stones and attacked a bus carrying Kanwariyas which was on its way to Haridwar. More than a dozen buses have been lit on fire injuring more than 30 Kanwars during the incident.
According to the reports, the incident occurred on the day of the Eid festival, when a Muslim mob got into an argument with Kanwars. At the night, as Kanwars began their journey towards Haridwar to continue their annual Kanwar Yatra, a large angry Muslim mob gathered near Idgah at Delhi Road and allegedly resorted to stone pelting on the bus and later torched the bus damaging more than 10 buses.
The mob violence on Kanwar Yatris come a week after the Congress government in Rajasthan passed a stringent anti-mob lynching bill in the assembly. Congress leader Ashok Gehlot led Rajasthan government had brought in the bill against mob lynching because it felt that the current provisions in the Indian Penal Code and Criminal Procedure Code were not ‘adequate’ to deal with mob lynching incidents.
During this incident, hundreds of devotees were trapped in a nearby Hanuman temple. Police started evacuating the devotees to protect from the terror inflicted by the Muslim mob on the Hindus. Somehow, the people extracted the Hindu devotees from the temple and moved them into a safe place. Reportedly, due to the stone pelting of the Muslim mob, their vehicles were damaged.
The Muslim mob did not even spare the police as they threw stones at them injuring seven policemen. The police were quick to fire tear gas to disperse the crowd in the area.
Jaipur commissioner of police Anand Shrivastava confirmed that some people hurled stones on a bus carrying Kanwariyas on its way to Haridwar on Delhi Road at around 10 PM on Monday.
Meanwhile, mobile internet services were suspended in some areas in Jaipur on Tuesday morning to prevent the spread of rumours after the attack on a bus carrying Kanwar yatris occurred.
Kanwariyas, the devotees of Shiva, begin their annual pilgrimage on foot to holy places of Haridwar, Gaumukh and Gangotri in Uttarakhand and Sultanganj in Bihar to fetch sacred waters of River Ganga and bring them to their local Shiva temples. Unfortunately, in recent times they seem to have become an easy target for the “liberal-secular” intelligentsia and Muslim community of the country.