The dastardly and cowardly act of murdering Kamlesh Tiwari exposes the clear and present danger of rising jihadi mindset of Muslims in Bharat

October 18, 2019, a Black Day in the history of secular Bharat.

Hindu activist and leader of the Hindu Samaj Party, Kamlesh Tiwari was brutally murdered by Islamic Jihadis at his residence-cum-office in Lucknow. News of his dastardly and cowardly murder had a shattering effect on me, as I had been lucky to be friends with him. Before diving into the details of his brutal killing by jihadis, I would like to briefly mention about his work and life.

The Hindu Samaj Party leader was born in Para Kothba village in UP’s Sitapur district in the early 1970s. His family shifted to nearby Mahmoodabad town in 1980. His father was a priest at the local Ram-Janki temple. Kamlesh grew up during the heyday of the Ram Temple Movement in Ayodhya. So naturally, he was highly influenced by the ongoing Ram Temple Movement spearheaded by the VHP during the 1980s. When calls for kar seva were given in 1992, Kamlesh was just a school-going boy in 12th standard. But his tender age didn’t deter him from reaching all the way to Ayodhya. He had also joined Bajrang Dal, the RSS-affiliated outfit by then. Kamlesh Tiwari never compromised on the cause of Hindutva for the sake of self-centred politics. So later he constituted the Hindu Tiger Force – a weakly-knit organisation comprising Hindu youths. He has also joined Hindu Mahasabha and went on to become its state President and then its National Working President for a brief period. By then, he had shifted his base to Lucknow. Kamlesh Tiwari also became a petitioner in the Supreme Court in the Ayodhya dispute. In 2015, the then Akhliesh Yadav Government had him arrested and incarcerated him in jail under the National Security Act (NSA) after his remarks on prophet Mohammad sparked a controversy. The Allahabad High Court quashed the case against him in 2016 and he was released on bail.

Over the years, Kamlesh had eight criminal cases slapped against him — five in Lucknow, two in Ayodhya and one in Varanasi. All in the name of Hindutva causes. Kamlesh felt the need to provide Hindus with a political party that won’t compromise under any circumstances. This long-cherished thought led him to form a political outfit of his own called Hindu Samaj Party.

Though Kamlesh Tiwari had a strong desire to lead from the front without any compromise on Hindu cause as he lived a controversial life, his indomitable spirit to fight remains an inspiration for all Hindu activists.

Since his murder the investigation has seen numerous developments and various people have been arrested for their involvement in the murder. Till now five people have been arrested. All accused are Islamic jihadis— Asfaq, Moinuddin, Maulana Mohsin Shaikh, Faizan Shaikh and Rashid. Three more people, Sayed Kaifi Ali, Asim Ali and Naved Siddiqui have also been arrested in connection with his murder. All the arrested are currently in the custody of Lucknow Police.

Jamiat Ulama-e-Hind of the Deobandi school of thought, the largest Muslim body in India, has extended legal and financial support to the Jihadi murderers of Kamlesh Tiwari. The Muslim Council has said that it is willing to bear all the legal costs to defend the five accused in the Kamlesh Tiwari murder case. They met the family members of the murderers and assured them to provide all kinds of help. Providing help to masterminds of organised murder is downright disgusting and shameful. But the so-called intellectual lobby and jamat-e-fiberal won’t utter a single word over this shamelessness and injustice. For them secularism comes to an end when it’s about Hindu lives.

The main conspirators named Rashid Pathan, Faizan Pathan and a Maulvi named Mohsin Sheikh had confessed that they have been planning Kamalesh Tiwari’s murder since 2015 for his comments on Prophet Muhammad’s sexuality. According to them it was ‘blasphemous’. The maulana had told the other two prime accused that it was ‘Okay’ and absolutely justified to kill Kamlesh Tiwari for his comments on prophet Muhammad. One of the accused Sayyed Kaifi Ali is a cleric. Ashfaq and Moinuddin had visited the cleric in Bareilly after they killed Tiwari in Lucknow on October 18. They wanted to send the message that Muslims won’t take anything against their religion and paigambar Mohammad.

A maulana instigating people to kill followers of other faith is horrifying in a democracy. The ideology is dangerous not only for the nation but also for the world. Also they had a sinister plan to record the murder and make it viral so that they could instill fear in anyone who insults Islam.

Four days after the murder, a team of Gujarat ATS nabbed Ashfaq and Moinuddin, the two prime accused in the case from the Gujarat-Rajasthan border. Ashfaq Hussain Jakir Hussain Shaikh is a medical representative in a Pharma company and Moinuddin Khurshid Pathan works as a food delivery boy with online food platform Zomato. Ashfaq is accused of having forged his colleague’s Aadhaar to pose as Rohit Solanki, a Hindu rights activist, to gain the trust of Tiwari. Kamlesh Tiwari’s employee did not stop them on gate as Kamlesh Tiwari had informed him earlier that he was expecting some people to meet him at his residence. The assailants were masquerading as Hindus and trapped Tiwari on the pretext of getting help in marrying a Muslim girl. One of them claimed to be in love with a Muslim girl and asked for legal and other help in wedding. How inhumane it is to dupe a person like this is!

No true follower of any God can commit a heinous crime like this. Not only did they betray the trust of Kamlesh Tiwari, their intention was to spread hatred on a larger scale. They committed the murder in Bhagwa clothes. Imagine the severe loathe they had developed for Hindus.

Police has recovered ‘bhagwa clothes’ from a Lucknow hotel which the jihadis had checked into after murdering Tiwari brutally. A CCTV footage of Ashfaq and Moinuddin had emerged in which one could see that Moinuddin and Ashfaq had changed into the ‘bhagwa clothes’ and left the hotel to commit the brutal murder of Kamlesh Tiwari.

During investigation an audio recording has also been obtained in which Ashfaq is heard talking to his wife and father, soon after murdering Kamlesh Tiwari. His wife can be heard requesting him to come back home. His father can be heard assuring him that he had his family’s support and also informed him that they were interrogated by the Gujarat ATS and assured him that he has his family’s support. He also requested him to come home.

What is disturbing and gruesome is that the murderers had no fear of law and punishment. The only thing they had in mind was jihad. They were so brainwashed, full of hatred and sure of their wrongdoing that they didn’t even try to hide their identities. The sweet box that they carried with themselves had their names on it. They even made it clear that they had left behind traces of evidence and their names on purpose. This is the first well-planned killing in by Muslim fundamentalists in the country.

The postmortem report of Kamlesh Tiwari’s murder revealed that the Hindu leader was stabbed 15 times and was shot once in his face. The Jihadis had stabbed him in the upper part of the body from jaws to the chest. There were two deep cut marks on his neck which pointed at an attempt to slit his throat. It was clear that jihadis did not want Kamlesh Tiwari to survive under any circumstances.

One of the murderers, Mohammad Naved Siddiqui, is a Delhi-based lawyer, registered to practise at Delhi High court. The lawyer with jihadi mindset had harboured the two killers of Tiwari and had personally taken them to the Nepal border near Lakhimpur-Kheri’s Gauri Fanta. Siddiqui is said to be associated with the Bareilly-based Islamic shrine. Thus the heinous crime has cut across state boundaries. The Police of Maharashtra, Gujarat and Uttar Pradesh are still conducting the investigation behind the murder.

One of the accused, Asim Ali, had contested 2019 Lok Sabha elections against BJP’s Nitin Gadkari. He had also uploaded a video where he gave threats to Tiwari. He can be heard saying that Tiwari’s days are numbered. Accusing Tiwari of blasphemy for announcing a movie ‘Rangeela Rasul’ on the life of Prophet Muhammad, Asim had said that no one should forget the sharp blade of Ibn Din, the Jihadi who stabbed the publisher of the book Rangeela Rasul back in the 1920s.

This is just shocking that the jihadis received all help wherever they went. All religions and human systems are infected by fundamentalists but it would be humongously wrong to not accept that Islam has it more comparatively. More rampantly. And the warriors of free speech lobby don’t even condemn such brutal killings. The messiahs of Indian Muslims like Asaduddin al-Owaisi indirectly support such killings when they say, “Even though Muslims constitute 96 per cent of Pakistan’s population, they continue to behave like minority, therefore needing the State’s patronage of Islam and a highly regressive blasphemy law. We are instilling a similar fear in our Hindus”. Such statements largely influence the radically charged islamic minds. This is the irony.