A 19-year-old Muslim student was on Sunday beaten up on the Savitribai Phule Pune University campus by a group of men who accused him of “love jihad” and threatened to kill him, The Indian Express reported.
“Love jihad” is a Hindutva conspiracy theory that Muslim men lure Hindu women into romantic relationships in order to convert them to Islam.
The police filed a case under bailable provisions of the Indian Penal Code and did not make any arrests.
The first-year student said he was on Sunday walking in the campus with his friends — one man and two women — when they were stopped by six men on three motorcycles who asked them for their Aadhaar cards, The Times of India reported.
“After going through our cards, they started accusing me of spreading love jihad and beat me up and slapped my friend,” the student said. “They did not harm the girls but cautioned them against speaking with me.”
The six men then called more people, who also allegedly abused and threatened the Muslim student. The men then allegedly called up the student’s father, who lives in Maharashtra’s Solapur district, from his mobile phone and abused him.
“They told him that if they did not cancel my admission then they would send back my dead body to our village,” The Indian Express quoted the student as saying.
The student’s family members left for Pune immediately after receiving the phone call. After the family members arrived in Pune, they informed the university authorities about the incident and then went to the police station.
Manoj Patil, the additional commissioner of police, said that closed circuit television footage of the incident was being examined to identify the attackers. “We have applied relevant sections and will take legal action against them,” the official told The Times of India.
The case has been filed under provisions of the Indian Penal Code pertaining to voluntarily causing hurt, unlawful assembly, rioting, intentional insult and criminal intimidation.
Inspector Ajay Kulkarni said that the student who was assaulted could not identify the suspects by name.
This was the second incident of Hindutva violence at the university in just over two months. In February, a group of Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad workers complained against a play depicting the backstage lives of actors in a Ramleela troupe.
The Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad is the student organisation of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh – the parent organisation of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party.
The student group alleged that the play depicted Hindu deities Ram, Sita and Laxman in an objectionable manner. A professor and five students were arrested on charges of hurting religious sentiments and subsequently released on bail.
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