After one-and-a-half-year and the matter finding an echo in the Supreme Court during the hearing of a case last week, the Noida Police has lodged an FIR over a complaint by a Delhi-based man who claimed a "communal attack" on him.
On July 4, 2021, the 40-year-old man, who lives in Delhi's Zakir Nagar, was on his way to Aligarh when he boarded a private vehicle in Noida's Sector 37 and claimed its four occupants assaulted him.
Kazim Ahmed alleged the unidentified occupants in the vehicle pulled his beard and forcibly removed his pyjama as they kept him hostage in the moving car for around 15 minutes in Noida before dumping him on a road.
Ahmed also claimed that when he approached the police, the local officials did not lodge his complaint or took any legal action.
Notably, the instance found an echo in the Supreme Court on January 13 during a hearing of a matter related to hate speeches focused on religious minorities in the country.
When contacted for the police's response over delay in lodging of the FIR, Deputy Commissioner of Police (Noida) Harish Chander told PTI, "The matter is sub-judice. No comments." According to the FIR lodged at Noida's Sector 39 police station around 1 AM on Sunday, four unidentified persons who were onboard the car have been booked.
The accused have been booked under Indian Penal Code sections 323 (voluntarily causing hurt), 324 (causing hurt by dangerous weapons), 504 (insult to provoke breach of public peace), 298 (uttering, words, etc, with deliberate intent to wound the religious feelings of any person), 352 (assault or criminal force otherwise than on grave provocation), the FIR showed.
The assault on Ahmed in Noida on July 4, 2021 had come within a month of an elderly Muslim man being attacked in the neighbouring Ghaziabad district.
On June 5, Bulandshahr-resident Abdul Samad Saifi was beaten up by some young men who allegedly also chopped off his beard and forced him to chant 'Jai Shri Ram'.
The Ghaziabad police had maintained that the attack on Saifi was not communal and due to a "personal enmity". The police had arrested around a dozen people over the assault case.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
