Meerut, Apr 13: A group of men belonging to the Hindu Yuva Vahini, a Gorakhpur-headquartered party whose leader is UP chief minister Yogi Adityanath, allegedly barged into a house in Meerut and dragged out a consenting couple, parading them in broad daylight to a local police station.
The men, who said they found the lovers in a "compromising position", alleged that the man, a Muzaffarnagar resident called Waseem Ahmad, had pretended to be a Hindu in front of the girl so that he could carry out a "love jihad".
Asked about it, a Vahini leader involved in the "raid" said he and his men only went to the house in Meerut's Shastri Nagar locality after getting a tip-off from neighbours. It was then that they took the couple to the thana. Though cops were present at the scene and as the humiliated girl was taken through a crowded street with people clicking her photos, they kept quiet and took no action of any kind.
Nagendra Pratap Tomar, the West UP head of Vahini, justified his initiative and said his outfit "came into the picture only after locals caught the couple". He added, "Police had already taken the couple to the station. We had been informed that a young man and a woman from different faiths were there in a room. But by the time we reached the place, police had already taken them to the thana. We asked the cops to register a case against the landlord, too, as it was he who allowed such activities in his house."
Police, however, had a different version of the whole incident. SP (city) Alok Priyadarshi said, "The couple was not inside the room. The boy was teasing the girl outside the house after which police arrested him. Since the girl did not come forward to register a complaint, we booked him under IPC sec 294 (obscene acts or words in public). There is no inter-religion angle involved as both are from the same faith."
Interestingly, the video, which has gone viral, clearly shows the couple inside a room. In the footage, they are being heckled, abused and brought outside the building by a jeering crowd. The video also has Tomar admitting that he and his team had "caught the couple red-handed".
Comments
Add new comment