A minor Hindu girl who was returning home from school was crushed to death by bike-borne miscreants on Friday (September 15, 2023) in Ambedkar Nagar district of Uttar Pradesh. The police arrested accused Shahbaz, Arbaaz and Faizal in the matter under Section Sections 302, 354, 298 and 304 of the IPC along with relevant sections of the POCSO Act. The fourth accused in the case identified as Munnu is still at large and police are on the lookout for him.
OpIndia on September 17 went to the deceased victim’s village in Ambedkar Nagar to meet her bereaved family. Besides speaking to the family members we also spoke to some locals, social workers and members of local Hindu organizations, who told us that the accused idolised the dreaded gangster Khan Mubarak. They also asserted that cases of ‘love jihad’ and eve-teasing are still rampant in their village and the adjoining areas.
The father of the deceased 17-year-old, Sabhajeet Verma, meanwhile, told us that the fourth accused Munnu was a bike mechanic and the other three accused Shahbaz, Arbaaz and Faizal often borrowed bikes from his shop, which they, in turn, used to follow and harass school girls in the village.
The deceased girl’s uncle also bemoaned the fact that the accused were repeat offenders who habitually harassed local girls. When asked what they did for a living, the deceased girl’s grandfather retorted angrily that they were all “lafangais” (useless rogues).
All local criminals hero-worship gangster and Chhota Rajan’s aide Khan Mubarak
KP Singh Paliwal, President of ‘The National Body Donation Association’ and a local social worker, spoke to OpIndia about this matter. He lives in the victim’s neighbouring village. He said that all four accused hero-worshipped the dreaded gangster Khan Mubarak, who died in the Hardoi prison in June 2023. KP Singh stated that there has always been fear of Muslims in the area, which he attributed to Khan Mubarak and his henchmen.
Paliwal alleged that Khan Mubarak’s men are still active in numerous areas and are involved in a variety of criminal acts, including the recent murder of the minor Hindu student.
KP Singh attributed the rise of terror and dread in the area to the patronage given to Khan Mubarak by the previous regimes of the Samajwadi Party and the Bahujan Samaj Party in the state. He asserted that the local Hindus in the area were, during those days, forced to move around with their heads lowered and that despite numerous complaints, the police did not care.
Though this terror has progressively diminished under Yogi Adityanath’s government, cases of eve-teasing and ‘love jihad’ are still prevalent in the educational institutions in the area, he said, demanding bulldozer action against the accused.
We were told that the majority of people in the surrounding area are Muslim.
OpIndia spoke with Akhilesh Srivastava, a local leader of Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP). He reiterated that eve-teasing and love jihad are quite rampant in the area. The girls, however, bear with it and prefer to keep quiet as they fear that their family members will withdraw their names from their schools.
According to Akhilesh, the murdered girl’s family lives in continual fear as a result of dreaded gangsters like Khan Mubarak and their henchmen. He asserted that this terror has been going on for a decade and that it has impacted not only the victim’s family but all Hindu households in the neighbourhood.
Notably, gangster Khan Mubarak, a close aide of Chhota Rajan, died in Hardoi district hospital in June this year. He hit the headlines in 2003 when he shot dead an umpire during a cricket match. There were 43 cases registered against him. Mubarak was arrested and while in jail, he came in contact with gangster Rajesh Yadav and Bachha Pasi who used to work for underworld don Chhota Rajan. Khan Mubarak and his brother Zafar aka Supari then joined Chhota Rajan’s gang and earned notoriety as contract killers. Khan Mubarak’s name also surfaced in a murder in Ghoorpur and another murder of a youth in the Kotwali area in 2005.
VHP issues an ultimatum
OpIndia met with Shyam Babu Gupta, a representative of former BJP MLA for the area Sanju Devi and a Vishwa Hindu Parishad officer. Shyam Babu Gupta stated that after observing the administration’s initial hesitation, he issued an ultimatum to the administration to take strict action immediately, which resulted in positive results. He promised the deceased’s family members all types of assistance, from financial to legal, and so on.
Besides Khan Mubarak, the terror of gangster and SP leader Azimul Haq palpable among Ambedkar Nagar residents
Shyam Babu Gupta went on to say that the Yogi government will have to work extremely hard to normalize the environment in the area. Recalling the times when the SP-BSP government were at the helm in UP, Shyam Babu said that there was so much terror among Hindus that mobile shop owners did not even keep Android phones in their shops. Khan Mubarak’s henchmen used to snatch those mobile phones and take them away. Also, due to the increased instances of theft, the entire market used to shut at 5 p.m.
Shyam Babu Gupta asserted that politicians like deceased Samajwadi Party MLA Azimul Haq supported not just big mafias and gangsters like Khan Mubarak, but also all kinds of criminals who tormented and tortured Hindus in their respective localities.
When the OpIndia team attempted to speak with other traders and common people at the Hirapur market, they refused to say anything. They declined because they were concerned about their safety. Many people, under the condition of anonymity, indicated that Yogi Adityanath is their only hope because they are afraid that the terror that occurred in the past will return if the government changes. We also noticed how, despite Khan Mubarak’s death, locals were hesitant to speak out against him.
In our previous ground report, we detailed how the 17-year-old deceased Hindu girl’s family had called her murder a well-thought-out and pre-planned conspiracy. The deceased girl’s sister and father said that they were waiting for Yogi Adityanath’s bulldozer to arrive at the houses of the accused. They had in unison demanded nothing less than the death sentence for the accused.
