By Harsh Mander
New Delhi: It was in his daughter’s home—a two-bedroom flat in New Delhi’s teeming Jamia Nagar—that I met Mohammad Jawed in April 2024. Government bulldozers had torn down his wife’s double-storeyed house in Prayagraj (formerly Allahabad), destroying much of his life’s savings.
A neat man with a trimmed, grey beard and a calm manner, Jawed, now 59, had spent 21 months in jail, fighting eight criminal charges and preventive detention. The judges did not find any convincing evidence that he had committed the crimes he was accused of and released him on 16 March 2024.
I met Jawed just weeks after his release. He was anguished but not broken. His spirited daughters—one 26 and a researcher and activist, the other 22 and a student (back then)—were still angry.
The spark that ignited the fire that consumed Jawed’s home and 21 months of his life was lit by demeaning remarks against the Prophet Mohammad by BJP national spokesperson Nupur Sharma in a television debate on Times Now on 27 May 2022. The recordings of her comments were circulated widely on social media and stirred outrage and protests by Muslims in India and abroad.
The first of these was protests in Kanpur in Uttar Pradesh on 3 June 2022 after the Friday prayers. The police dispersed the crowds and arrested many people. But the fires spread to many parts of the country, including Ranchi, Howrah, Bhiwandi and Udaipur, where stones were thrown, and people were killed in police firings and hate attacks.
In Prayagraj, Jawed, angered by the one-sided police action in Kanpur, posted on Facebook (now deleted after official pressure): “Why did the Kanpur violence occur? Why does the state government not investigate the real disease? Until when will people like Nupur Sharma and Yati Narsinghanand make obscene remarks against the Prophet Muhammad and the government and police will be quiet…”
This story was originally published in article-14.com. Read the full story here.
