In June, an Islamic organisation by the name of Muslim Ekopana Samithi had carried out a protest march against a ruling of the Kerala High Court, which had annulled the conversion and subsequent marriage of a 24 year old Hindu girl.
The organisation had conveyed to the police that about 500 people would be participating in a protest, which was to be held in Kerala’s Ernakulum district, but about 5000 people turned up instead. The mob, which alleged that the verdict was unconstitutional and violated fundamental rights, soon turned violent. It overturned barricades and even started rushing towards the police, who then had to fire tear gas and water cannons to control them.
With a physical confrontation with judiciary not helping, things are being taken to the next level in Kerala as has been revealed in a exclusive investigative report by the Kochi Post.
According to that report, WhatsApp messages are being sent in “Muslim groups” which profess the need to have more lawyers from their community in order to fight against the injustice meted out to various Muslim youths by the Indian judiciary.
The message was translated by Kochi Post from Malayalam and was reportedly first sent in April. The message categorically asked the recipients to share it only in groups having Muslim members.
It alleged that most of the cases with Muslim defendants either resulted in their conviction or a compromise. It further claimed that there was a dearth of Muslim lawyers and Judges in India and gave some numbers of religion wise break up of Supreme Court strength. Then it claimed that the situation was the same in High Courts, District courts and Lower courts.
The message then tried to inflame the passions of the Muslim readers by claiming that thousands of youths were languishing in jails just because they had a Muslim name and that there weren’t enough lawyers to free them. It warned that if the Muslim community continued to turn its face away from the profession, it would worsen things.
The Kochi Post report also claimed that such messages were a clear violation of the section 153A of the IPC, which deals with the enmity being promoted between different groups on the basis of religion.
Such an urgency shown by the minority groups does make some sense, as legal activism has been one of the main cornerstone of the so-called pro-minority groups. The other focus are has been media activism, with “favourable” journalists and reporters covering incidents that “matter” to the community.
For example, AIMIM President Asaduddin Owaisi, who is also a lawyer, has in the past offered legal aid to 5 terror suspects belonging to an ISIS module. Recently, a former NDTV journalist who is now an AIMIM MLA from Maharashtra, was involved in sending back Taslima Nasreen, showing how law and media has always been focus areas of ‘Muslim activism’. There have also been allegations of presence of a whopping Rs. 100 crore fund, which is used to defend people who are suspected to have been ‘wrongly accused’ of terror charges based on their religion.
