NEW DELHI: A delegation of representatives from the Jamiat Ulema-e-Hind and Jamaat-e-Islami Hind visited Haldwani on Sunday with Jamiat chief Maulana Arshad Madani alleging that protestors are being discriminated against on the basis of religion in various parts of the country.
Condemning the Haldwani police action, Arshad Madani, who heads a faction of the Jamiat, said the report given by the representatives of the delegation that visited Haldwani to review the affected areas is extremely painful.
"According to the report, the police are arresting people by breaking all limits of cruelty and abuse, even breaking the door and forcibly entering houses," Madani said.
He said that this was "extreme cruelty and no just society can tolerate it", and added that both men and women were being harassed.
"We have also written a letter to the Uttarakhand DGP yesterday demanding immediate attention in this regard.
And the abuses that the police are committing on innocent citizens should not only be stopped, rather, the nefarious series of arrests that have started should also be stopped immediately," he said.
Madani said there should be a fair investigation into this whole incident.
Local people protesting against the administration is not a crime, he said.
"The Constitution has given every citizen of the country the right to protest. Suddenly when the people of Municipal Corporation reached there with the bulldozers, local people protested and to suppress them, the police used lathi charge and started firing," he said.
Madani alleged that the police, instead of enforcing law and order, "become a party against Muslims everywhere" but act differently in cases involving others.
"Discrimination on the basis of religion among the protestors is deplorable," he said.
Meanwhile, Maulana Mahmood Madani, who heads the other faction of the Jamiat, has written a letter to Union Home Minister Home Minister Amit Shah, expressing profound concern over the situation in Haldwani.
He questioned the haste in carrying out the demolition and urged that a lasting solution needed to be found on demolitions, particularly involving religious places.
A magisterial probe was ordered on Saturday into the February 8 riots after the demolition of an "illegal" madrassa in Haldwani, while curfew was lifted from the outer areas of town but remained in force in Banbhoolpura, the epicentre of the mob violence.
Six rioters were killed while 60 people were injured in Thursday's violence.
