A man opened fire outside the Jamia Millia Islamia University in Delhi today during the ongoing protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act, injuring one person in the ensuing. He has now been taken into police custody. The man had been identified as one Gulshan Sharma (name changed), who is a resident of Jewar in the Greater Noida area of Uttar Pradesh.
Hours before the incident, ‘Rambhakt Gulshan’ (name changed) went live on Facebook multiple times saying he is ‘coming to give azaadi’. Gulshan took to Facebook to declare that what he intended to do was an act of revenge for Chandan Gupta, the 16-year-old Hindu boy who was shot at and murdered, by one Salim, following a Tiranga yatra by the ABVP, where people from a particular community had pelted stones which led to clashes in Uttar Pradesh’s Kasganj in 2018.
Reportedly, Gulshan, who is now in police custody, had continued to brandish his gun as people continued to gather around him.
Though until then details were unclear on why the man was openly wielding the gun, people on Twitter speculated that it may be staged to get back some legitimacy to the protests after Shaheen Bagh mastermind Sharjeel Imam was arrested.
It’s not yet clear if he was indeed acting on his own or has been paid by the leftist groups, as many suggest, but if we go by the Facebook posts and consider them not paid, this is how it appears.
The members of Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), the student wing of RSS, were attacked while taking out the Tiranga Yatra on the Republic Day, in the year 2018, through a Muslim locality. The chants of ‘Vande Mataram’ and ‘Bharat Mata ki Jai’ by the ABVP members irked some people which sparked violence and resulted in the death of 16-year-old Chandan. As per reports, it had been alleged by Chandan’s father, that his son was killed for refusing to chant “Pakistan Zindabad”.
Read- Dear ‘liberals’, stop blaming Chandan for his own murder
Even though Chandan Gupta’s death was widely mourned by Indians, some so-called liberals had started to blame him for his own death.
The Uttar Pradesh police had made a total of 121 arrests in the Kashganj matter. Salim, the main accused along with his brothers Waseem, Naseem and 17 others had been charged in connection with the matter.
Last year, in the Republic Day parade organised in the police line in Kasganj, the family of deceased Chandan was honoured by the state government. Sushil Gupta, the father of Chandan, was offered a memento as a mark of tribute by Suresh Pasi, Minister in charge of the district. District Magistrate R P Singh also paid tribute to Chandan.