Several media outlets such as ‘Times of India’ (TOI), ‘Scroll’, ‘ThePrint’, and leftist propaganda portal ‘The Wire’ have reported that four members of the Akhil Bharat Hindu Mahasabha (ABHM) have been arrested for planning to slaughter a cow to falsely implicate Muslim men in Agra.
The media reports stated that the four accused namely—Sanjay Jat, Saurabh Sharma, Jitendra Kushwaha, and Brajesh Bhadoria had lodged a fake complaint to settle a rivalry.
“Based on their complaint, a first information report was registered against four Muslims – Mohammad Rizwan, Mohammad Nakim and Mohammad Shanu, and Imran Qureshi – for slaughtering a cow. However, police investigation later revealed that the four men had nothing to do with the incident,” Scroll report stated.
Meanwhile, The Print reported, “On 30 March, the police said, Jat and his accomplices allegedly got a cow slaughtered in a field near Agra’s Mehtab Bagh and falsely accused four Muslim men — Rizwan, Nakeem, Chhotu and Shanu — of the act.”
The Print report further claims that a case was registered by the police against the four Muslim men in order to maintain peace and prevent the situation from escalating.
While these media reports insinuated that the whole matter was about ABHM members conspiring to falsely implicate Muslim men Rizwan, Nakim, Shanu, and Imran for slaughtering a cow and fan communal tensions, however, police disclosures suggest that the conflict was between Muslims, with participants from Hindu groups ostensibly working as allies. It is pertinent to note that the youths who killed the cow, Imran and Shanu, are Muslims who reportedly collaborated with other Hindus to file a complaint in an effort to put an end to their long-standing enmity with Rizwan and others.
The entire incident began at 1 in the morning on March 30, when Jitendra filed an FIR of cow slaughter in the vicinity of the Agra Police Etmaddaula police station. As per the complaint, four people named Rizwan, Nakeem, Bijju, and Shanu were slaughtering a cow and selling beef in the bushes near the Gautam Nagar cave.
Jitendra and his friends, Vishal and Manish Pandit, the complaint said, had visited the spot, only to discover that the accused had fled, leaving the butchered cow behind. They urged the police to take strong action against the culprits, branding them as cruel cow slaughterers. The police began their inquiry after filing the FIR (a copy of which is available with Opindia) under Sections 429 of the IPC and 3/5/8 of the Uttar Pradesh Prevention of Cow Slaughter Act.
On April 5, the police learned of the presence of five individuals in the city who were involved in the killing of cows. Furthermore, the police came to know that the perpetrators were planning to escape on a bike and a scooter. However, two of them, Shanu and Imran, were apprehended while riding a scooter during the police raid.
Three charges have already been filed against Imran in Agra while Shanu has six active cases in the city. Most of these cases are of cow slaughter. Salman and another offender managed to get away.
While the media reports are asserting that the Muslims accused in the case are innocent, both of the arrested accused Shanu and Imran confessed that they had a history of animosity with Agra residents, including Nakeem, Bijo, and Rizwan, during their interrogation. They suspected that Nakeem, who worked for the Agra Municipal Corporation, had a role in sending Jhallu and Imran to jail some time back.
Since then, both of them desperately wanted to teach him and his friends a lesson. So they elaborately planned to slaughter a cow and later place the blame on Nakeem, Rizwan, and others. To execute their machinations, Shanu, Imran, and others killed a stray cow in an empty field in Gautam Nagar.
The cow slaughterers roped in Sanjay Jat, Saurabh Sharma, Brijesh Bhadoria, Ajay, and Jitendra to lure them to their adversaries. They added that Sanjay Jat and his friends knew about the occurrence beforehand and were prepared to instigate trouble for Nakeem and others by filing an FIR following the cow’s death.
It is alleged that all of them were continuously in touch with one another, both on the phone and in person, before and after the incident. According to the plan, Jitendra filed an FIR against Rizwan, Nakeem, and others after the occurrence, and he and his friends pressured authorities to take the latter into custody.
Sanjay Jat is rejected by ‘Hindu groups’
A member of the ‘Bajrang Dal’ in Agra spoke with OpIndia on the condition of anonymity and they said that the working methods of Sanjay Jat and his associates are already under question. He labelled the accused and his aides as being capricious. Moreover, SHO Etmaddaula informed us that Sanjay Jat and the other conspirators are already rejected by the ‘Hindu Mahasabha’ and other authentic Hindu bodies.
