A campaign to denigrate Hindus and their festivals is being undertaken by the usual suspects for a long. And the Hindu festival that is attacked by the left-liberals the most is Holi. In the name of environment protection, water conservation, animal harassment, and harassment of women, the ecosystem launches an attack on the festival every yere.
One such attempt came to the fore during the just concluded Holi this year. There are claims on social media that more than 35,000 incidences of Holi-related violence have been reported in Delhi. Moreover, claims of over 250 deaths in such violence were made. In addition, it is claimed that it excludes instances of sexual offences perpetrated while Holi was being celebrated. However, all such claims are fake and baseless.
On Saturday, March 11, a ‘journalist’ named Wasim Akram Tyagi in a tweet claimed that over 35,000 cases were registered on the day of Holi in Delhi, adding that around 250 people were killed.
“On the day of Holi, 35,000 cases were reported in Delhi. Intentionally and unintentionally, 250 people were killed. Lakhs of cases where men have taken out their sexual frustration on women under the guise of Holi have not been reported. Rest is fine. Ramraj is going on. It has been 9 years since we became Vishwaguru,” Tyagi wrote in a now-deleted tweet in Hindi, clearing blaming the Modi government for these fictional crimes.
While Wasim Akram Tyagi deleted the tweet, several other Twitter users made the same claims. While looking for the source of this claim, we came across a tweet from a person going by the name of Ali Sohrab. This tweet in Hindi posted by Sohrab on March 8 read: “What happens on the day of Holi in a constitutional democracy that all kinds of serious criminal cases including murder, rape, exploitation of women, molestation of women are more than 35000 on the day of Holi only in the capital? Well, from this you can get an idea of the crimes committed on the day of Holi in the whole country.”
संवैधानिक लोकतंत्र में होली के दिन ऐसा क्या हो जाता है कि हत्या, बलात्कार, महिलाओं का शोषण, महिलाओं के साथ छेड़छाड़ समेत तमाम तरह के संगीन अपराधिक मामले केवल राजधानी में ही होली के दिन 35000 से अधिक होते हैं?
— Ali Sohrab (@007AliQaQa) March 8, 2023
खैर, इससे आप पूरे देश में होली के दिन होने वाले अपराधों का अंदाजा खुद… https://t.co/7xjZ5LaRnP pic.twitter.com/3y1rPuNBqX
A Twitter user named Abdul Haseeb Raza Khan also tweeted on 9 March, “What happens on the day of Holi in a constitutional democracy that all kinds of serious criminal cases including murder, rape, molestation with women are more than 35000 on the day of Holi only in the capital??? This is what will happen when there is a rally in support of the rapists…”
संवैधानिक लोकतंत्र में होली के दिन ऐसा क्या हो जाता है कि हत्या, बलात्कार, महिलाओं के साथ छेड़छाड़ समेत तमाम तरह के संगीन अपराधिक मामले केवल राजधानी में ही होली के दिन 35000 से अधिक होते हैं???
— Abdul Haseeb Raza Khan (@HaseebK21313974) March 9, 2023
जब rapist के समर्थन में रैली निकलेंगी तो यही होगा….. #बेटी_बचाओ_नारा_या_चेतावनी pic.twitter.com/F7dLSOwnIj
During the fact check, we found that the majority of the tweets related to this claim had content tweeted by Ali Sohrab. This suggests that such content may have been sent to a group wherein the members of the group may have been instructed to tweet this.
Since OpIndia had to find out the truth of these claims, we began investigating news reports, where we found an Inshorts report. The screenshot of this report, which claimed that 35000 complaints were filed in Delhi on the day of Holi, was being circulated. However, this news was published 7 years ago, in 2016.
The Inshorts report was based on a 2016 India Today report via PTI that was published on 27 March 2016.
As per the report, Delhi Police control room received as many as 35,890 calls on the day of Holi in 2016. However, the daily average is 24,000 calls, which means there was almost 50% increase in the number of calls received by the police. Out of these, the action was taken in 18000 cases. The remaining instances, then, were either inadmissible for action or were called again.
Therefore, there were around 35000 calls to the PCR in 2016 on the day of Holi, it does not mean 35000 cases were filed on that day. Both are completely different. According to the police, there were 211 molestation cases, 21 rape cases, and 11 murder cases on that day. There were also a lot of instances of theft and dacoity.
It is notable that people call the police number for a variety of reasons, like help in getting LPG cylinders, address enquiries or enquiries regarding exam centres, and only a small number of them are registered as cases. Moreover, a large number of calls received by the police are also blank calls, many of them dialled mistakenly by people. According to Delhi police, only around 25% of all calls received are actionable, and as high as 45% of calls are blank calls. Police also receive abusive calls, where drunk people call the police, and sometimes people call the police number just for fun.
It is notable that according to reports last year, the Delhi police received 11,614 calls on two days of Holi in 2022, which is much less than the 2016 number. No such report has been published for this year’s data.
Therefore, it is completely false that 35,000 cases were filed in Delhi on Holi this year. That was the number of calls received by the Delhi Police Control Room in 2016. The control room receives thousands of calls every day, and only a small number of them are related to crimes to be converted to actual cases. Many of them are general enquiry calls, not regarding any complaints, and a large number of the are blank calls, while many are regarding minor issues that do not require any police action.
Calls during Holi do go up, due to quarrels among people, but it is a completely false allegation that hundreds of murders take place on the day of the festival. It is also a false claim that lakhs of molestation of women in the name of Holi go unreported every year. In this age of social media, almost all such cases appear in public, and police take action in such cases.
