The incident happened in a branch of UCO Bank in Bihar’s Begusarai. The bank officer had asked the woman to lift the hijab just for matching the photograph.
A Muslim woman in Bihar’s Begusarai had an argument with the bank officials when she was asked to remove her hijab for verifying her photograph.
The woman had gone to the bank with her father, Mohammed Matin, to withdraw cash. Finding the signature a little blurred, the bank cashier requested the Muslim woman to lift her hijab for matching the photograph.
The woman and her father refused to lift the hijab and started threatening the bank cashier and branch manager. They even threatened to file police cases against bank employees.
The incident happened on February 10 at UCO Bank’s Mansoor Chowk branch at Bachhwara in Begusarai. The video of the incident had gone viral on social media.
Bank manager Ritesh Kumar told the press that finding the signature little blurred, the cashier had only requested for the photo identification.
The bank employees are very much authorized to check the signature and photograph of customers before processing requests. The bank is also authorized to deny services if proper identification is not established. Burqa and hijab have become the new battleground for Islamists.
Mohammed Matin later said, “My daughter has had an account in the bank for the last few years. The bank had never asked her to lift the hijab or veil at the time of withdrawing money. I reasoned with the bank manager, Ritesh Kumar, to cite rules for asking one to lift their hijab or veil for verification. He later allowed my daughter to withdraw cash after explaining that there are rules in place to verify customers if signatures do not match, or the bank has some doubts about identity of the customers.”
In the first week of February, some Muslim girls in Karnataka’s Udupi suddenly started demanding that they be allowed in classrooms in a burqa. When the administration denied them permission, they moved to Karnataka High Court with the plea to allow burqa in classrooms. The three-judge bench led by Chief Justice Ritu Raj Awasthi is hearing the matter.
Multiple media investigations have revealed that Islamist organization PFI and its wings, SDPI and Campus Front of India, orchestrated the burqa controversy.
26-year-old Bajrang Dal activist Harsha was murdered by Islamists in Karnataka’s Shivamogga on Sunday (February 20) for writing a Facebook post opposing burqa in classrooms.
Senior Congress leader and Supreme Court lawyer Devdatt Kamat, who is representing the Muslim girls in the Karnataka High Court, is arguing that burqa is mandatory in Islam and an integral part of it. Outside the court, the Islamists are presenting it as a choice for Muslim girls and women.
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