The Meerut Police have initiated action against a social media user who had dished out a veiled threat to Social Media activist and Freelance author Nidhi Bahuguna on Twitter.
The official Twitter account of the Meerut Police took cognisance of the threat issued by the social media user and forwarded it to the cyber cell for necessary action against the accused.
उपरोक्त प्रकरण के सम्बन्ध में साईबर सैल को आवश्यक कार्यवाही हेतु निर्देशित किया गया ।
— MEERUT POLICE (@meerutpolice) August 11, 2020
The threat was issued by a user named ‘Hamza’ after Nidhi responded to ‘human rights activist’ Aakar Patel’s highly provocative tweet, urging Muslims to demand for reserved seats or separate electorates. Patel’s incendiary tweet exhorting Muslims in India to demand proportional representation in the Parliament and elected bodies elicited a prompt reply from Nidhi Bahugana, highlighting how her family, who originally hailed from Sialkot before the partition, were not granted any safety or electoral rolls in the Muslim majority Pakistan.
”My family was forced to migrate from Sialkot to meerut post partition. The Muslims in meerut stayed on in their ancestral homes. My family was not given any safety or separate electoral rolls by a Muslim majority in pak,” Nidhi tweeted.
However, Nidhi’s tweet irked Hamza so much so that he proceeded to issue a threat to her on Twitter. Responding on Nidhi’s tweet, the social media user said that he is from Hapur road on Meerut and menacingly sought her address from her, apparently to determine “who has more courage”.
After a social media user tagged Meerut Police on the thread where Hamza had issued a threat against Nidhi, the Meerut Police shot back, saying that the cyber cell has been directed to initiate necessary action.
However, spooked by police intervention, the social media user Hamza withdrew his tweet and deactivated his social media account.
Nidhi Bahuguna’s account of Meerut riots
Earlier last year, when communal tensions flared up in Delhi Hauz Qazi after a desecration of temple in the neighbourhood, Nidhi Bahuguna had written an article on OpIndia, recounting her horrific ordeal during the riots in Meerut.
In her article, Bahuguna narrated that communal flare-ups were a between Hindus and Muslims was a common occurrence in the city of Meerut during the tumultuous years of 70s and 80s. Bahuguna chillingly describes the violent riots in 1986-87 when the piercing chants of “Allahu Akbar” reverberated across the town as the rampaging Muslim mob went about decimating everything that came on their way.
“It was early morning in Shastri Nagar, a hindu majority middle class colony. On an early morning in the summer of 1987, far away slogans of Allahu Akbar suddenly filled the air and dark black cloud of smoke appeared on the horizon. Before we could know what the matter was, suddenly lots of neighbours living on the outskirts of Shastri Nagar (a Hindu majority colony) next to Hapur Road (a Muslim majority area) began running in on foot, on scooters, on cycles. They said a muslim mob had attacked them and they were throwing burning tyres into their homes. They also said a petrol pump had been burnt on Hapur road,” Nidhi had written in her article on OpIndia.
