All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen chief Asaduddin Owaisi on Monday filed a complaint with the Telangana Police against Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma for a video that depicted the Bharatiya Janata Party leader symbolically firing at images of two Muslim men at point-blank range.
The Hyderabad MP remarked in a post on social media that “genocidal hate speech” had become the norm.
The video, which was posted by the Assam unit of the BJP on Saturday, has since been deleted following social media criticism.
The clip combined what appeared to be original footage of Sarma handling rifles with artificial intelligence-generated images portraying Muslims as targets. On-screen text included slogans such as “Foreigner free Assam”, “No mercy”, “Why did you not go to Pakistan?” and “There is no forgiveness to Bangladeshis”.
On Sunday, the BJP leader told reporters that he had not seen the video. “Has anything been posted from my account?” Times Now quoted the chief minister as saying. I am the chief minister of Assam...I have to speak with responsibility.”
On Monday, Sarma said that he is “against Bangladeshi infiltrators and will continue to be against them”, ANI reported.
Owaisi filed a complaint with the Hyderabad Commissioner of Police against Sarma for “his deliberate and malicious acts of outraging the religious feelings of Muslims, promoting enmity between two communities, and making imputations which are prejudicial to national integration”.
In his complaint, the All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen chief said that the BJP leader had been continuously making statements against the Muslim community through social media, print media, public speeches and other platforms for the past several years.
Owaisi added that Sarma had “deliberately intensified his hate speeches, with a clear and conscious intention to outrage the religious feelings of Muslims and to promote enmity and hatred between Hindus and Muslims…”
The Assam BJP post on Saturday came in the backdrop of a series of remarks that Sarma made targeting Miyas, or Bengali-origin Muslims, in the state. The chief minister had said that it was his job to “make them suffer”.
In Assam, “Miya” is a derogatory word used to refer to undocumented immigrants and is exclusively directed at Muslims of Bengali origin, who migrated to Assam during the colonial era. They are often accused of being undocumented migrants from Bangladesh.
Owaisi, in his complaint on Monday, cited a Supreme Court order, which had held that it was the constitutional duty of the state and law enforcement authorities to protect fundamental rights, preserve constitutional values, and safeguard the secular and democratic character of the nation, particularly the rule of law.
The All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen chief said that the court had further directed that the police must take suo motu action in cases of hate speech even in the absence of a formal complaint.
Also read: Himanta Sarma’s remarks about ‘Miyas’ make a mockery of the Constitution
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