A consultation meeting was held in Indore on Friday under the banner of Association for Protection of Civil Rights (APCR) to discuss the strategy to deal with the cases.
Waquar Hasan | Clarion India
NEW DELHI – Activists, lawyers and concerned citizens have joined hands to fight legal cases related to recent anti-Muslim violence happened in different districts of Madhya Pradesh. They have chalked out a plan to cope with the situation.
A consultation meeting was held in Indore on Friday under the banner of Association for Protection of Civil Rights (APCR) on the issue. Delhi University Professor Apoorvanand Jha, APCR secretary Nadeem Khan and activist Asif Mujtaba are some of the prominent personalities, along with a team of lawyers, attended the meeting.
Speaking to Clarion India, Nadeem Khan said, “We have decided some basic things. A legal team has been set up for every city. It has also been decided how to challenge the cases foisted on innocent citizens. A SoS team has also been formed to look into the cases in the high court to take up the cases related to the district court.”
Several petitions were filed in the state high court in the cases related to demolitions carried out in Madhya Pradesh after communal violence during Ramnavami and Hanuman jayanti celebrations. These petitions will be filed afresh. Cases will be filed against those officers who played a role in demolishing houses without serving any legal notice. They will be made a party in these cases. In some cases, it has already been done. More such cases will be filed, he said.
In April, some districts of Madhya Pradesh such as Khargone and Sendhwa witnessed anti-Muslim riots during processions being taken out on the occasion of the aforementioned festivals. After the violence, many houses and shops, mostly belonging to Muslims, were demolished on the orders of the Madhya Pradesh government. Those who were arrested in connection with the violence were mostly Muslims. The state government faced wide criticism for partisan actions against the minority community.
Khan informed that his team has already filed four petitions regarding the demolitions. One of them has been filed in the Supreme Court on behalf of three victims.
“In the meeting, we have done strategic analysis on how to approach the court and on whose behalf. We have also discussed how to ensure that such things don’t happen in future. In Dhar, there is an issue of cowshed. We have filed a petition on this issue along with another on a dispute over a mosque in Indore,” he said.
Asif Mujtaba, an IIT research scholar, is one of the activists who had run a donation campaign for riot victims. During the meeting, he gave details of the donation and compensation provided to the victims. He told Clarion India that through crowd-funding, his NGO mile2smile collected 1.7 crore of which he gave away around 80 lakh to the victims within three days.
He said monetary assistance is the lowest level of relief for the victims of violence. The highest level of relief is psychological counseling which is not possible without justice. This is hard to come by in the case of Muslims.
During the meeting, Mujtaba said, “We are doing this neither to protect the constitution nor Ganga-Jamani tahzeeb. Our sole purpose is to help our Muslim brethren. We are burdened so much that we are unable to fulfill this commitment fully. We have to protect our lives and properties and our women during the riots. Once the riots are over, we have to save ourselves from fake cases.”
