Haridwar: Police case after outrage over anti-Muslim hate speech

Police in the northern Indian state of Uttarakhand have registered a case after a meeting of Hindu leaders called for violence against Muslims.

Videos from the meeting showing provocative speeches by Hindu religious leaders went viral earlier this week, sparking outrage.

The event took place in the holy town of Haridwar between 17 and 19 December.

But the police said they did not open a case until Thursday because there were no official complaints before that.

There have been no arrests yet, and the police case only mentions one man by name - Waseem Rizvi, a Muslim who says he has converted to Hinduism and is now known as Jitendra Narayan Tyagi. Police said that a case had been registered against Mr Tyagi and unnamed "others" under charges of "promoting hatred between religious groups". Social media users, however, have identified many of the speakers in the videos who are important religious leaders often seen in the company of ministers and members from Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

Activists say the frequency of hate crimes against Muslims and other minorities have increased since 2014, when the BJP first came to power. Videos of hate speech or violence against Muslims regularly go viral in India.

Critics allege that this is because of the support - both open and tacit - that the perpetrators receive from top ruling party leaders.

One of the organisers of the Haridwar event, Prabodhanand Giri, has often been photographed with party leaders, reported NDTV. In one photo, Uttarakhand's Chief Minister Pushkar Dhami, a BJP politician, is seen touching his feet.

At the event, Mr Giri was seen asking India's army, politicians and Hindus to do what was done in Myanmar - referring to the deadly violence against Rohingya Muslims that led to their exodus from the country.

He told NDTV that he wasn't afraid of the police and stood by his statement.

At Haridwar, he, like many others, asked Hindus to pick up weapons to "protect" their religion from Muslims.

Ashwini Upadhyay, a former BJP spokesperson who was also seen at the event, said in a video uploaded on Twitter that he was present only for half an hour on the last day.

Mr Upadhyay had been arrested in August in connection with a rally in the national capital, Delhi, where anti-Muslim slogans were raised.

Senior police official Ashok Kumar told BBC Hindi that "such provocative statements are wrong, so we have also asked for the videos to be blocked on social media".

But many on social media have questioned why the police have not registered cases against any of the speakers and named only Mr Tyagi in their report.

Mr Tyagi was the controversial head of a board that administered properties belonging to Shia Muslims and earlier this month, he said he had given up Islam and converted to Hinduism.

Mr Kumar told The Indian Express that the case was lodged after receiving a complaint from a local resident which named only Mr Tyagi and said he couldn't identify the others.

Meanwhile, videos from a separate event held in Delhi on 19 December also went viral around the same time as those from Haridwar.

In one of them, a journalist who runs a right-wing TV channel could be seen administering an oath to a group of people to "die for and kill" to make India a Hindu nation.

He later said he was repeating an oath taken by Maratha emperor Shivaji in 1645.