Kota Police claim the viral video is old, but Altnews maintains the incident happened on 23 June this year
Team Clarion
NEW DELHI — Scores of Hindu students started vociferously chanting ‘Jai Shri Ram’ near the place where Muslim students were offering prayers in the Allen Institute of Rajasthan’s Kota last week.
The unpleasant saga came to light as video clips of the 23 June (Friday) incident went viral on social media. The video show Muslim students offering prayers inside a designated room and a crowd of students shouting Hindutva slogans outside.
C.R. Chaudhry, vice president of the institute, said the issue should not be blown out of proportion in view of the present vitiated climate.
“The act of these students did not come to our notice at that time. Had it been brought to our notice then we would have explained the things to them,” he said in a video statement.
Meanwhile, the police in Kota tweeted that the video in question was from 2020. No such incident happened there recently, they maintained.
“This video is from 2020. No such activity took place now. At that time effective action was taken by the concerned organisation. We constantly monitor such developments. The law and order situation is normal,” the Kota Police said.
However, Altnews, a fact-checking website, disputed the police version and said the incident in question indeed happened on 23 June this year.
“The video is not from 2020. This happened on the 23rd. Around June 10-12, approximately 25 of us had taken permission for namaaz from the principal sir, the floor in charge and the ground staff. Initially, we were supposed to pray on the fifth floor. But when more students wanted to join, the principal sir suggested that we pray on our respective floors. Some people raised Jai Sri Ram slogans when we started to pray on our floors, but we ignored them. June 23 was Jumma, so during the Asr prayers, many students came and loudly chanted Jai Sri Ram slogans on the fourth floor of Block A. However, no serious altercation followed that incident. We left peacefully and attended our classes,” a student was quoted by Altnews.
Another student told a website that videos were deleted from their phones and they were asked not to offer namaz inside the institute for a few days. The student, who was also among those who prayed on 23 June, said that they did not respond to the sloganeering even though such slogans are raised frequently in the institute, especially in the presence of Muslim teachers.
The video has evoked sharp reactions on social media.
A social media user Rahul Mukherji tweeted “Muslims were praying. And that triggered the Hindus to agitate, shouting Jai Shree Ram. These are not some RW “activists”. But students from a coaching institute. They’ll go on to become doctors and engineers. An entire generation of bigots in the making”.
