BHOPAL: AIMIM chief Asaduddin Owaisi has questioned the booking of an FIR against an Imam (a religious leader who leads prayers in the mosque) hailing from Bihar by police in BJP-ruled Madhya Pradesh’s Khandwa district for staying at a mosque without informing cops.
“Article 19 of the Constitution renders a fundamental right to every citizen of the country (to move freely throughout the Indian territory and reside or settle anywhere in the country). The Khandwa district police superintendent needs to tell which is bigger, Article 19 of India’s Constitution or Section 223 of BNS? The Imam from Bihar has been booked in Khandwa (MP) by police only because he is a Muslim,” Owaisi said.
Back on September 9, an FIR u/s 223 of the BNS (which deals with the offence of disobedience to a duly promulgated order by a public servant) was lodged at the Khalwa police station of the communally sensitive Khandwa district of southwestern MP.
The two men booked in the matter included Haji Hanif Khan Kharkalan (the caretaker of the mosque in Kharkalan village) and Akhtar Raza (an Imam from Kishanganj, Bihar).
The local police lodged the case as the mosque’s caretaker allowed the Imam from Bihar to stay in the mosque for around a month, without informing the local police.
According to the Khandwa district police superintendent Manoj Rai, “As a part of the prohibitory orders imposed in the district under Section 163 BNSS, the owner/caretaker of any building needs to inform the administration/police before renting out the building or allowing anyone from outside to stay in the building. But, neither the mosque’s caretaker nor the Imam from Kishanganj (Bihar) informed the police, due to which the duo has been booked under Section 223 BNS.”
As per Khandwa district police sources, the Kharkalan village under Khalwa police station is a communally sensitive village, where a case was registered against a few men for shouting religiously provocative and abusive slogans during the Eid-Milad-Un-Nabi procession recently, outside the house of a family from the other community.
Many residents of the village had told the police that ever since the religious leader from Kishanganj (Bihar) had started staying in a part of the mosque, communal tension had been growing in the village.