Omar Rashid 
New Delhi: Two Muslim men accused in the murder of a Hindu youth during the recent communal incident in Uttar Pradesh’s Bahraich were on Thursday (October 17) shot in the leg by police and arrested near the Indo-Nepal border, said officials.
Police alleged that the two accused persons were shot after they fired at the police team that had accompanied them to a location in Bahraich’s Nanpara area to recover the weapon used in the murder of Ram Gopal Mishra during the Durga idol procession on Sunday.
Along with the two persons who were shot – Mohammad Sarfaraz and Mohammad Taleem – police said they arrested three others linked to Mishra’s killing. They were identified as Abdul Hamid (Sarfaraz’s father), Mohammad Faheem and Mohammad Afzal.
The shooting of Sarfaraz and Taleem came less than a day after the former’s sister Ruqsar had come out in the media and expressed an apprehension that the police could shoot dead her brothers (Sarfaraz and co-accused Faheem), father Hamid, husband Osama and brother-in-law Shahid.
Ruqsar alleged that her husband and her brother-in-law had been picked up by the police from their residence in the Kewanaganj area of Bahraich on Monday, a day after the violence in the district’s Mahasi tehsil. She also alleged that police had detained her father and her brothers along with another person on Wednesday but did not show this in the records.
“They were not in any police station. I fear that they will be killed in a fake encounter,” said Ruqsar in a video hours before police announced the shooting.
Vrinda Shukla, Bahraich’s superintendent of police, said that Sarfaraz and Taleem were taken to a location in Nanpara near the Indo-Nepal border to retrieve the weapon used in Mishra’s murder. They had allegedly hidden it at the location after the incident.
“The DBBL [double-barrel breech-loading shotgun] gun in a loaded state and another illegal weapon were hidden there,” said Shukla.
The officer said that the two men fired at the police team with these weapons. Police fired back in self-defence and the two were shot and injured, Shukla told journalists.
The police are yet to reveal if any police personnel were injured or how the two accused managed to use the weapons amid tight security, given that they were touted as the main accused.
Also read: The Communal Violence at Bahraich Is a Blot on Yogi’s Claims of ‘Danga-Mukt’ Uttar Pradesh
Shukla said arrests will continue in the case and that the stringent National Security Act will be invoked against all the accused.
Amid a wave of misinformation spread about Mishra’s killing by some television channels as well as social media users, the Bahraich police clarified that he was not subjected to torture with electricity, attacked with a sword or have his nails plucked out.
“These are not true,” said police, adding that Mishra’s cause of death as shown in his post-mortem report was a bullet injury.
The outspoken BJP MLA from Deoria, Shalabh Mani Tripathi, celebrated the shooting of Sarfaraz and Taleem in a social media post. “The beasts of Bahraich have received their treatment,” he said on X.
Samajwadi Party president Akhilesh Yadav, speaking to reporters, said the BJP government was carrying out “encounters” to “hide its failures.”
The Bahraich communal incident was a “failure of the government and an administrative failure,” said Yadav, asking why the government could not ensure that the Durga idol procession concluded in a peaceful manner.
Hyderabad MP and president of the All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen, Asaduddin Owaisi, a vocal opponent of the BJP government, said it was “not difficult to know the truth” about the Bahraich “encounter”.
“Everyone knows about Yogi’s ‘thok denge’ policy. If the police had this much evidence, efforts would have been made to provide legal punishment to the accused,” said Owaisi.
Mishra, a Hindu youth who was seen uprooting a green flag (customarily linked to Islam) atop a Muslim residence shortly before being shot, was the only casualty in the Bahraich incident. After uprooting the green flag, Mishra was seen atop the roof of the house violently waving a saffron flag of the Hindu deity Ram as a large mob that was part of the procession shouted slogans of ‘Jai Shri Ram’ and ‘Jai Bajrang Bali’.
The violence erupted after some local Muslims objected to the playing of loud music – other versions say the music was also vulgar – in the procession that was passing by their homes in the Maharajganj area.
After Mishra died as a result of a gunshot injury, angry, rampaging mobs armed with sticks and iron roads protesting his death torched shops, vehicles and private property, including a hospital, linked to the minority community.
The violence lasted for over two days before it was finally brought under control.
The police is yet to provide a full account of the action taken against the rioting and arson incidents that took place after Mishra’s death.