Umar Khalid Shooting: Police to Focus on Trolls as Part of Probe
New Delhi: Citing sources in the the Special Cell of Delhi Police, a report in the Indian Express has said the probe into the recent attack on JNU student leader Umar Khalid would focus on those who trolled and threatened him online, including on social media. A special cyber team has reportedly begun to scan Khalid's social media data.
Umar Khalid narrowly escaped death when a man tried to shoot at him on Monday. He managed to escape unhurt. The attack took place when Khalid and his friends had gathered at the Constitution Club in the Capital for a discussion on mob lynchings and minority alienation under the Narendra Modi regime.
As per the Indian Express report, the case has been transferred to the Delhi Police Special Cell following several rounds of meetings between police commissioner Amulya Patnaik and senior officers. The discussions revolved around the ongoing sedition case against Umar Khalid and alleged death threats he had received in the past from gangster Ravi Poojary. “It was then decided to transfer the case to the Special Cell as they had earlier solved several cases related to the gangster,” the report quoted an officer as saying.
In recent days,Umar Khalid has been mobilising people on social media to join the discussion organised by the civil society group United Against Hate. The Indian Express report also quoted 'sources' as saying that the police have begun preparing a list of people who had issued threats to Khalid or wished him ill online. Police believe the assailant knew Khalid’s schedule, and was also familiar with the topography of the area.
The police have also called experts from a mobile company to procure dump data — or mass collection of mobile phone data.
Many students of Jawaharlal Nehru University have been at the receiving end of such threats and abuses following the February 9 campus incident three years ago, snowballing into a major confrontation between the university academia and the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party(BJP) government at the centre.
On Tuesday, student activist and a former member of JNU students’ union Shehla Rashid Shora filed a case against Ravi Poojary for allegedly threatening her. She said Poojary had warned her, Khalid and Dalit leader Jignesh Mevani to ‘shut up’ or face dire consequences. In a message to Shora the screenshot of which the student activist put up on Twitter, Poojary said, “Just shut your mouth or we will shut your mouth forever. Tell Umar Khalid and Jignesh Mewani also. Mafia don Ravi Poojary”.
It would also be useful here to recall here that female journalists and activists, as in the case of Shehla Rashid, are routinely confronted with online threats of rape.
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