The Jamiat Ulama-e-Hind, which roughly translates to Council of Indian Muslim Theologians belonging to the Deobandi school of thought has extended legal and financial aid to the Islamists accused in the Kamlesh Tiwari murder. The Muslim Council has said that it is willing to bear all the legal costs and also offered the held of their legal cell to defend the 5 accused in the Kamlesh Tiwari murder.
Apart from Rashid and Ashfaq, the others are Maulana Mohsin Shaikh, Faizan Shaikh and Moinuddin Pathan, also residents of Surat. Moinuddin and Rashid are brothers. Maharashtra ATS had also arrested one more accused identified as Sayyad Asim Ali from Nagpur. The arrested are currently in the custody of Lucknow police.
After the 5 were arrested for brutally murdering Hindu activist Kamlesh Tiwari for allegedly insulting the Prophet of Islam in 2015, Jamaat Ulema-e-Hind met the family members of those arrested and asked then what help they would need in the proceedings. The family members reportedly told the members of the Jamiat that they required legal and financial assistance.
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According to an Indian Express report, Jamiat Ulema-e-Hind Secretary Hakimuddin Kashmi and General Secretary is Maulana Mehmood Madni, said, “We are ready to provide all possible help to the families of the five arrested in the Kamlesh Tiwari murder case. We have also taken consent of our general secretary Maulana Mehmood Madni and we have taken a decision to give all the legal assistance to the family members of five arrested ones. We also have our legal cell, which will take up the case and fight it. We have received the application of the family members of all the five murder accused and we are going ahead with it.”
On 18th October 2019, Hindu Samaj Party leader Kamlesh Tiwari was brutally murdered for his comments in 2015 against Prophet Muhammad. The Uttar Pradesh police and Gujarat ATS sprung into action to blow the lid off a Surat-based Jihadi group that was indoctrinated by one of the accused who planned the murder, Maulana Mohsin Sheikh.
In a major breakthrough, the Gujarat ATS had nabbed Ashfaq, a medical representative in a pharma company and Moinuddin, who worked as a food delivery boy, on October 22 from Gujarat-Rajasthan border. Ashfaq had forged his colleague’s Aadhaar to pose as Rohit Solanki, a Hindu rights activist, to gain the trust of Tiwari. The duo was caught after they approached their family members after they ran out of the money they had.
Read: Dear DGP OP Singh, people with a violent dogma don’t need a Kamlesh Tiwari to get radicalised
The radical Islamists, Ashfaq and Moinuddin had checked into a Lucknow hotel from where the Police had recovered Bhagwa clothes that were worn by them. While one CCTV footage of Ashfaq and Moinuddin checking into the Lucknow hotel had emerged, another CCTV footage also emerged, in which one could see that Moinuddin and Ashfaq have changed into their Bhagwa clothes and are leaving the hotel to commit the brutal murder of Kamlesh Tiwari.
Two other conspirators, Rashid Pathan and Faizan Sheikh have been arrested on late Tuesday evening from Surat in Gujarat in connection with the murder. Today, Gujarat ATS arrested one maulana named Sayyed Kaifi Ali of Bareilly on charges of helping the killers of Tiwari which took the total number of arrests to six.