For the past couple of years, we have witnessed an increasing trend in Muslim attacks on Hindus, their establishments, and gatherings during Hindu festivals. What were the odds of the situation in India being uneventful this Diwali?
Days ahead of the major Hindu festival, Sudarshan News reported that one Mohammad Abdullah and Abbasi were preparing poisonous rasgullas (an Indian sweet) to sell to Hindus during Diwali. Meerut Police caught them and destroyed hundreds of thousands of these poisonous sweets. While our team has not independently verified these claims, some credible social media handles have alleged that close to 300 quintals (3000 kilograms) of food products were found laced with poison. The matter was not made public knowledge, and there was almost no reporting on it by the mainstream media, either.
In another report from the Pani Gate area of Vadodara, Gujarat, Muslims stormed in, hurling abuse and raising objections on the Diwali celebrations that were about to be held on Sunday evening. Representatives of the Hindu association, Vishwa Hindu Parishad Vadodara, stated that Muslim goons had made all the necessary arrangements to start a riot during Diwali. They added that these Muslims had turned off street lights and flung stones and petrol bombs at the groups that were celebrating Diwali. Gujarat Police investigating the incidents have confirmed the claims of street lights being switched off before the preplanned attack. The perpetrators deliberately did this in order to evade being identified or caught on CCTV cameras.
Deshgujrat reports that these bombs were hurled from the vicinity of a Muslim-owned medical store in the Muslim-dominated area of Pani Gate, which is just meters away from the Hindu Swaminarayan temple. Petrol bombs were hurled at a police officer as well. The police have detained 19 people so far.
But this was not the only commotion created near a Hindu temple by Muslims this Diwali. A far more dreadful act of terrorism has also been reported from Coimbatore in the state of Tamil Nadu. 25-year-old Jameesha Mubeen died in a blast outside a temple on Sunday. He had been questioned by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) in 2019 for his connections with a terrorist group that was linked to the mastermind of the Easter Sunday bombings in Sri Lanka, Zahran Hashim. According to a source cited by the Indian Express, “He was among the five people we had to examine in 2019 since he had been attending Bayan classes at a Coimbatore mosque of the Tamil Nadu Thowheed Jamath (TNTJ). These classes were closely related to Mohammed Azarudeen, who had direct contact with Zahran Hashim, the mastermind and the leader of the suicide bombers in Easter Sunday blasts in Sri Lanka.”
Mubeen’s death, caused by a gas cylinder blast boarded on a vehicle, has sparked an inquiry into a possible terror plot, with some authorities suspecting that Mubeen was a jihad suicide bomber. The Tamil Nadu Director General of Police, C. Sylendra Babu, stated that Mubeen procured the ignition materials from his home, and they “may have been meant for a future plan.” Authorities have also raided Mubeen’s residence and recovered explosive components including aluminum powder, potassium nitrate, charcoal, and sulfur.
CCTV footage retrieved from the vicinity of Mubeen’s Ukkadam home shows four men, including Mubeen himself, lugging a bulky object out of his house at 11.25 pm. Muslim-dominated Ukkadam is known to be a sensitive area. The police are now looking for the other three people who can be seen in the footage. Investigators assume that the object wrapped in a white bag was the gas cylinder that later exploded. Nevertheless, the police have remained tight-lipped when quizzed if the explosion was an unsuccessful attack on the temple.
On the other hand, K Annamalai, State President of the Bharatiya Janata Party, has taken to Twitter to assert that the Coimbatore cylinder blast is not just a “cylinder blast.” He said, “It’s a clear cut terror act with ISIS links. Will Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu come out in the open and accept this? Tamil Nadu government is hiding the info for 12 hours now. Is this not a clear failure of the state intelligence machinery and DMK government?”
The questions Annamalai raised were valid, and exposed the threat that continues against the Hindus and Hindi properties. The police, so far, have arrested five men, identified as Mohammed Riyas, Mohammed Talka, Feroz Ismail, Mohammed Azarudeen, and Mohammed Navaz Ismail, in connection with this case.
