LUCKNOW: The role of 11 persons in attempting to disturb the communal harmony in the temple town of Ayodhya by throwing some objectionable material outside a mosque has come to light. Seven of them have already been arrested by the district police and the search for the remaining four people is on.
As per police sources, the accused were wearing skull caps to purportedly project themselves as Muslims while making an attempt to instigate riots in the area.
In fact, the incident took place on Wednesday night. The accused rode past the mosque on bikes and threw raw meat, pages of a holy book and some objectionable posters in a bid to disturb peace and harmony, said Ayodhya SSP SK Pandey.
Those identified by police as accused include Mahesh Kumar Mishra, Pratyush Srivastava, Nitin Kumar, Deepak Kumar Guar alias Gunjan, Brajesh Pandey, Shatrughan Prajapati and Vimal Pandey.
Police officials said that the accused were identified with the help of CCTV footage of the area and they will be booked under National Security Act (NSA) and Gangster Act.
Additional chief secretary (home) Awanish Awasthi has announced a reward of Rs 1 lakh to the police team that solves the case.
According to IG KP Singh and Ayodhya SSP SK Pandey, seven persons arrested so far admitted that they executed the incident after proper planning and threw objectionable posters and objects outside the mosque.
As per the police sources, those who were arrested admitted that they planned to throw objectionable material in front of the mosque after getting miffed by the Jahangirpuri flareup in Delhi where the Shobha Yatra on the occasion of Hanuman Jayanti was attacked and pelted with stones.
The police officials said that the accused revealed that they had been planning the incident for the last four days. The papers thrown by them in front of the mosque along with other objects had the reference to Jahangirpuri incident which, they claimed, had disturbed them.