On Monday, April 17, the Supreme Court refused to hear petitions seeking the registration of FIRs in recent incidents of violence witnessed during Ram Navami processions in different parts of the country.
BREAKING: #SupremeCourt REFUSES to entertain plea seeking probe into Ram Navami Violence incidents across India
— LawBeat (@LawBeatInd) April 17, 2023
The petition was filed by Hindu Front for Justice (Trust), through advocate Vishnu Shankar Jain. Alleging that disturbances and violent acts are committed by members of the Muslim community every year during Ram Navami processions across the country, the plea sought the filing of FIRs in the violent incidents that took place during this year’s Ram Navami celebrations in various parts of the country.
The petitioner demanded that chief secretaries of each state involved produce a report on the violence and called for action against the culprits. Additionally, it requested guidance from the affected state governments on how to calculate the loss suffered by those who were hurt or died as a result of the violence.
“It is submitted that this year on the occasion of Ram Navami, large-scale violence has been committed by the members of the Muslim community in a pre-planned manner in different parts of the country, namely, at Howrah, Uttar Dinajpur (West Bengal), Sasaram and Nalanda (Bihar), Hyderabad (Telangana), Aurangabad (Maharashtra), Vadodara (Gujarat), Jamshedpur (Jharkhand),” the petition said.
Rejecting the plea, the apex court asked the petitioner to approach the high courts of the respective states where the incidents were reported.
Ram Navami violence
Ram Navami or the birth anniversary of Lord Rama is an auspicious occasion in the Hindu calendar year. However, like every year, Hindus came under attack when they celebrated one of their most revered festival on March 30 this year. There were reports of stone-pelting and violence in many cities of the country. One person was killed in West Bengal and one in Maharashtra in these violent incidents. Apart from this, there have also been reports of stones pelting on the Shobha Yatra of Ram Navami in Gujarat and Uttar Pradesh.
In fact, a fact-finding team, probing the violence that had erupted in West Bengal this year during Ram Navami Shobha Yatra, had alleged that the “riots were pre-planned, orchestrated and instigated.” It said that the West Bengal Police allowed the violence to go on during a Ram Navami Shobha Yatra in the Hooghly district.
The Calcutta HC also observed that Ram Navami violence in West Bengal was prima facie ‘pre-planned.’
OpIndia recently documented the current status of each such case. While we provided a summary of the incidents of violence, we also included the action taken by the police and their statements of the incidents, and in many cases, we also documented the versions of those Hindus who were victims of the hate crime.
