On Wednesday, 25th September, a new video of spitting on food appeared from Tittiri town, Baghpat, Uttar Pradesh. An individual named Shehzad was seen spitting on the rotis (flatbread) before putting them in the oven for cooking. The incident came to the fore after a video went viral over the internet in which the host of the video could be heard criticizing Hindus for serving contaminated food. The person who was recording the incident from a car criticised Hindus, as the name of the hotel was ‘Naresh Chicken’, indicating that contaminated food was being served at a hotel run by Hindus.
However, police conducted an investigation in the case and discovered that the person found spitting on the food was one of the hotel employees named Shehzad. After the video went viral, the hotel owner questioned the accused employee about the incident, but the he began misbehaving with the owner. Later he was arrested.
The video was shared by several Islamists who claimed that the chef at ‘Naresh Chicken’ was spitting on the rotis and serving contaminated food to the customers. The accused in the video could be seen spitting three times on the rotis. However, while sharing the video Islamists claimed that a Hindu hotel was serving such derogatory food. However, later it was found that the accused who was spitting on the rotis was Shehzad, an employee of the hotel.
“Naresh chicken seller is making rotis by spitting! Look who is spitting in the bread! And you defame others!” said one ‘journalist’ Sadaf Afreen. However, later she posted that the accused had been identified as Shehzad.
It is important to note that several Islamists like the Wire’s Arfa Khanum Sherwani, Alishan Jafri, Alt News Co-founder Mohammed Zubair, etc have downplayed the incidents of Love Jihad and Spit Jihad terming them fake. They claim that the majority community in the country finds ways to deliberately target the minority and make them feel unsafe. However, several persons accused in the cases of spit jihad have been observed to be belonging to the minority community.
Incidents of spit jihad reported in the past few years
On September 13th, the Loni Border police station arrested a 29-year-old juice salesman on charges of putting urine in juice, and his minor companion (15) was also detained. According to ACP Bhaskar Verma, the arrest was conducted in response to a public complaint. People had complained that Aamir, the juice salesman, was offering customers fruit juice mixed with human pee. Verma stated that when police arrived at the scene and inspected his juice cart, they discovered a plastic can full of urine. According to him, the police interrogated Aamir about this, but he couldn’t provide a satisfactory answer.
On 7 September 2024, Yamin’s son Chand was seen spitting on the rotis being cooked at a dhaba in Noida. After the video went viral, police filed a case and arrested Chand. In the video recorded at A-One Dhaba in Rabupura market, Chand was seen spitting on rotis while making them. He was seen spitting on not just one but several different rotis.
On February 16th, 2020, a Muslim fruit vendor in Raisen, Madhya Pradesh, was seen arranging a variety of fruits on his cart in the middle of a marketplace. While arranging the fruits on the cart, the vendor was seen picking up the fruit one at a time. And each time he picked up a fruit to arrange in the cart, he first purposely licked his hand and then used the hand, smeared with his saliva, to pick up the fruits and re-arrange on his cart. He purposely contaminated the fruits which he would eventually be selling it to his customers.
Following this shocking incident, an FIR was filed against the Sheru Miyan in Madhya Pradesh under IPC 269 (Negligent act likely to spread infection of disease dangerous to life) and 270 (Malignant act likely to spread infection of disease dangerous to life) on April 3, and he was arrested by police.
In 2021, a man named Mohammad Farman was caught spitting on watermelons being sold by him in Muzaffarnagar, Uttar Pradesh. The act was also caught on a CCTV camera after which Farman was nabbed by Muzaffarnagar police. A case was then registered against Farman and he was lodged into police custody.
In March 2021, a person named Mohsin was arrested in the Ghaziabad district for spitting on rotis. During interrogation, he revealed that he had been spitting at social events of non-Muslims for the last several years.
In another case of a cook spitting on rotis, Delhi Police arrested two persons named Mohammad Ibrahim and Anwar after a video of them spitting on rotis had gone viral on the internet. They were working in a hotel in Seelampur. In the video that had gone viral, one of the two men was seen spitting on the rotis before putting them in a tandoor.
UP CM Yogi Aditynath orders action
Following a series of such incidents that have been reported happening in the past few years, UP Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath this week instructed the launch of a statewide campaign to inspect all such eateries and carry out police verification of their employees. As per official sources, the chief minister’s directives were issued during a high-level meeting with senior officials. The chief minister stated that, if necessary, regulations should be revised to ensure the health and safety of the general public.
Adityanath mentioned that reports of human waste and other substances allegedly mixed into food products and juices have emerged from various parts of the country. He described these incidents as ‘repulsive.’ “The names of the owners, managers, and others working there must be prominently displayed at every dhaba, restaurant, and eatery…police verification of all the persons working there must be conducted,” Adityanath said.
He also instructed that CCTVs be installed not only in customer seating areas but throughout other parts of the restaurant.
Hindu names used by Muslim shop owners to attract Hindu customers
During July this year, the Kawariya Hindu devotees raised concern that they were worried about the food being served in the hotels on the way. They complained that they were being served contaminated food by non-Hindu hotel owners who used Hindu names to name their hotels in a bid to attract Hindu customers. Later UP Minister Kapil Dev Agarwal and CM Yogi Adityanath also stated that Hindu yatris were served non-veg food by Muslims, under the garb of Hindu hotel names.
OpIndia then conducted a ground investigation to find that several hotel owners belonging to the Muslim community had named their hotels after Hindu names. For instance, a man named Khurshid owned a dhaba between Ghaziabad and Saharanpur in the name of Manav Punjabi Dhaba. Jahangir owned a chaat center in the name of ‘Sheetal Chaat Bhandar’. Mohammad Anas Siddique owned an eatery in the name of ‘Vishnu Dhaba’.
Several Hindu shop owners then told OpIndia that these persons (Muslim shop owners) deliberately changed the names of their shops to attract Hindu customers during Hindu festivals or Yatras, but Hindu shop owners never did anything like this. It was also reported that members of the Mosque during Islamic festivals would decide to boycott Hindu shop owners and ask their community members to buy goods only from minority community shop owners.
Conclusion
Hindus have been falling prey to such tactics deliberately imposed by some specific community members. And these accused persons who spit, and pee into the meals are supported by ‘intellectuals’ like Arfa Khanum Sherwani, Mohammed Zubair, Alishan Jafri, and several other Maulanas too. In 2021, a man with an Islamic cap, presumably some Maulana was seen spitting in the food. During that time also, Alt News co-founder Zubair downplayed the incident claiming that it was an old video and was being spread during COVID spread to allegedly target some specific community. But, he eventually failed to ‘fact-check’ whether the ‘Maulana’ was spitting on the food or not.
These incidents are still considered hoaxes by Islamists who even fail to take cognizance of police action against Raisen, Sheru Miyan, Fahaad, etc who have been caught on camera spitting on the food in the past. The Islamists supporting such persons must understand that highlighting such incidents has to do nothing with religion, but hygiene. Tomorrow even if a Hindu is found spitting on anyone’s food, appropriate action will definitely be called for. Spreading religious hatred or justifying unhygiene to favor a particular religion is not a solution to this, and will never be. After all, the country has just passed the critical phase of COVID-19 spread that led to economic instability, social, and emotional structure disruption, and whatnot, and as a nation, we Indians can’t afford to be inviting that dreadful phase again.
