Muslim shrines in Kolhapur were first attacked in 2023. But the vandals got away

On the morning of July 14, a mob targeted Muslim residents in Gajapur village in Maharashtra’s Kolhapur district.

The Quint reported that some residents were physically assaulted, their homes were ransacked and a video showed the men attacking the Sunni Raza Jama masjid in the village.

But this is not the first time that Hindutva groups have targeted Muslims in Gajapur, a village at the foothills of the centuries-old Vishalgad fort.

In February 2023, on the occasion of the Hindu festival Maha Shivratri, a Muslim shrine at the foot of Vishalgad fort was attacked.

Called the Hazrat Sayyed Malik Rehan Meera Saheb dargah, the shrine is located two-and-a-half kilometres from the Sunni Raza Jama masjid that was attacked on July 14.

That story went mostly unreported.

Even at the time, the violence was linked to a movement to clear “illegal encroachments” near the fort led by Sambhaji Raje Chhatrapati, a former Rajya Sabha Member of Parliament.

Several of the men involved in the 2023 violence told Scroll they were associated with the Bajrang Dal, Shiv Sena and the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena or flaunted their political links on social media.

Soon after, local residents had petitioned the Kolhapur administration to rein in the attackers. The residents were then led by Nazim Mujawar, the chief priest at the dargah, who passed away earlier this week.

But the district administration’s actions left much to be desired. Police officials were present at the site, videos show, yet it took the police more than a week to nab the accused. Only six men were booked and some of them arrested. At least two of them were granted bail within days.

In its press statements, the Kolhapur police also misrepresented their links to right-wing Hindu outfits and political parties.

The Maha Shivratri violence

Sambhaji Raje, a descendant of 17th century Maratha warrior-king Shivaji, is the face of the movement to remove “encroachments” around several forts in Maharashtra.

The settlements at the Vishalgad fort, located only a couple of kilometres from Gajapur, have been on his radar.

In December 2022, Raje met the Kolhapur district magistrate to discuss the encroachments around the fort, reported the Times of India. The district magistrate assured Raje that “the work to remove encroachments over Vishalgad fort will start before Maha Shivratri”, which fell on February 18, 2023.

In a letter written on January 12, 2023, Nazim Mujawar, the chief priest of the shrine, told the Kolhapur district magistrate that the people living at the foothills of Vishalgad had been there for generations.

“We are priests of the dargah and our traditional occupation continues till date,” he wrote. “Many generations of us have lived here.”

Within days of Raje’s visit, however, the Maharashtra archaeology department served demolition notices to residents within the fort’s precincts.

On February 16, two days before Maha Shivratri, the Bombay High Court stayed the demolition after residents argued that the structures around the fort had been regularised, and that they were being discriminated against on religious grounds.

The court stay did not end their anxieties. On February 18, dozens of men, draped in saffron stoles, gathered outside the Hazrat Sayyed Malik Rehan Meera Saheb dargah at the feet of the Vishalgad fort.

The dargah is more than a century old, finding mention in the Gazetteer of Bombay Presidency published in 1886.

The mob of attackers had little concern for the history of the shrine or those who lived around it.

Posters shared by them on social media before the gathering showed a JCB demolishing the dargah. They shared similar posters before the July 14 violence.

Around 11 am on February 18, the men stuffed a small cannon with pellets. They then set up the cannon to face the dargah and fired it. Such was the impact of the explosion that the surface below the cannon cracked.

The attack left several dents on the gate of the dargah, made out of white marble. The men exulted, played loud music, set off firecrackers and danced.

Videos showed that police officials were present when the cannon was fired at the religious structure. The entire episode was captured on camera since the attackers filmed it and flaunted it on their Instagram and Facebook profiles.

Days after this vandalism, local residents petitioned the district magistrate regarding the violence. In a letter, seen by Scroll, they detailed the damages.

“The sanghathan workers broke the drinking water tanks of some villagers on the fort. The doors of some villagers’ houses were kicked. A stone was thrown at the window,” they wrote. “The wall of a Dargah trustee’s house where a court case is pending was demolished.”

It added that the men abused the local women and young men. “An atmosphere of fear has spread among the citizens due to the sudden sound of the cannon,” it added. “Therefore, the administration should make appropriate efforts to prevent such incidents from happening again.”

The villagers said that there was “permanent Hindu-Muslim harmony at Fort Vishalgad” and the administration should not let outsiders disturb this.

They also demanded that two policemen should be provided permanently at the fort to avoid such incidents of vandalism. “Proper precautions should be taken so that such kind of things do not happen again at the fort,” they said.

The letter was undersigned “all Hindu-Muslim villagers, Vishalgarh fort”.

The police case

It took the Kolhapur police more than a week to arrest the miscreants involved in the Maha Shivratri violence in February 2023.

In a press note released on February 26, 2023, the Shahuwadi police station said it had filed an FIR in the matter and arrested six men: Arun Injulkar, Rohit Kurne, Praveen Mandavkar, Siddharth Katakgondh, Suhas Shinde and Ramesh Pawar.

The men were charged with Indian Penal Code sections on deliberately outraging religious feelings, defiling a place of worship, mischief causing damage and unlawful assembly.

In a strange turnaround in the same press note, the police said that “some people in both Hindu and Muslim communities have spread false rumours and information through the social media that Hazrat Pir Malik Rehan Baba Dargah was attacked and stone pelted.”

It also said that none of “the accused are not workers of any political party”. But two of the accused contradicted this claim.

Arun Injulkar told Scroll that he was a member of the Bajrang Dal, the youth wing of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, which is part of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, the parent organisation of the Bharatiya Janata Party.

“I was arrested but the police released me on bail two days later,” said Injulkar, who runs a cloth shop in Kolhapur. “We were only celebrating our festival. I don’t know what is wrong with that.”

Praveen Mandavkar also told Scroll that he was a Bajrang Dal member and had been let out on bail “three or four” days after his arrest.

Siddarth Katakgondh’s Instagram bio mentions Vishwa Hindu Parishad and the Bajrang Dal. It has photos of him posing with BJP politicians, including Maharashtra deputy chief minister Devendra Fadnavis and Telangana MLA T Raja Singh.

The other men seen in the videos of the Maha Shivratri violence include Sambhaji Salunkhe, Harshal Surve and Rushikesh Sali.

Surve, who justified the violence in a Facebook post, describes himself as the “city coordinator” of the Shiv Sena in Kolhapur on his social media profile.

Salunkhe, who contested from Kolhapur North assembly seat in 2019, unfurled a saffron flag outside the dargah.

Sali’s instagram says that he is the vice president of the Raj Thackeray-led Maharashtra Navnirman Sena in Hupari town in Kolhapur district. A video on his Instagram account shows him carrying the cannon to the front of the shrine.

Surve, Salunkhe, and Sali were not booked for attacking the Meera Saheb dargah.