Prayagraj: On May 24, Sunita Dayal, mayor of Ghaziabad and former Uttar Pradesh Bharatiya Janata Party vice-president, posted an extraordinary video on her official Facebook page claiming, “Today I caught two Muslim children trying to throw remains of cow meat near Hindon Barrage in Indirapuram.”
“Isi desh ka khayenge aur yahin gandagi karenge (they live off this country, yet they dirty it too),” she could be heard saying in the over two-minute video posted on her page.
A 2024 study in Down to Earth characterised the Hindon river as “a drain carrying domestic and industrial waste” and an internet search failed to locate any previous insistence by Dayal on the filing of cases despite many videos in the public domain showing people throwing garbage in the river.
Two children are seen in the video she posted, wearing skull caps and carrying a yellow sack on the carrier of a bicycle. In her video, to which a watermark has been added, the children’s faces are clearly visible and are not blurred – an offence under the Juvenile Justice Act. Visibly scared, they stood listening to the mayor haranguing them, timidly answering questions thrown at them.
“Dimag patthar bana diya hai inka (their brains have been turned into stone)… is madarasse par na maine tala lagwaya toh baat nahi (just see how I will ensure that this madrassa is sealed forever),” Dayal could be heard as telling the children in an explicitly communal diatribe.
“We called the police. Sending kids to throw it (meat) away, this is just so wrong,” mayor Dayal told The Wire.
Contrary to the mayor’s claim, however, the video does not show the children throwing any material into the river.
A day later, on May 25, UP Police arrested three Muslim men associated with a local madrasa, based on the mayor’s allegations. Forensic examination of the meat sample is also underway.
Speaking to The Wire, Assistant Commissioner of Police (ACP) Abhishek Srivastava, posted at Indirapuram, confirmed the arrests. Srivastava said: “An FIR has been registered under Sections 271, 272 and 279 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS) against three persons namely Zubair, Aijaz and Shoaib.”
While Section 271 of the BNS pertains to negligent acts likely to spread infection of disease dangerous to life with a prison sentence that may extend to six months, Section 272 of the BNS is related to malignant acts likely to spread infection of disease dangerous to life and prescribes imprisonment that may extend to two years. Section 279 of the BNS, on the other hand, pertains to the offence of fouling a public water body with a maximum sentence of six months’ imprisonment.
This story was originally published in thewire.in. Read the full story here.