Former Punjab director general of police (DGP) Mohammad Mustafa, Strategic Adviser to Punjab Congress Chief Navjot Singh Sidhu, has been booked for a hate speech he allegedly delivered while campaigning for his wife, cabinet minister Razia Sultana, in Malerkotla last week. Malerkotla is the only Muslim-dominated constituency in Punjab.
Mohammad Mustafa.
An FIR was lodged against Mustafa around midnight Saturday under Section 153 A (promoting disharmony, enmity or feelings of hatred between different groups on grounds of religion, race, place of birth, residence, language, etc. and doing acts prejudicial to maintenance of harmony) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC), and Section 125 (promoting enmity between classes in connection with election) of The Representation of the People Act, 1951.
The FIR, was registered on the basis of a Malerkotla sub-inspector’s statement regarding a video clip of the speech that has gone viral on social media.
On Saturday, a viral video clip of Mustafa’s speech in Malerkotla, the only Muslim-dominated constituency in Punjab, had triggered a political storm.
Opposition parties including the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) hit out hard at the ruling Congress over the speech, warning it against “disturbing law and order” ahead of the elections. They also asked the Election Commission (EC) to take action against Mustafa. However, the former DGP tweeted Saturday that there was “no Hindu-Muslim context to what happened in Malerkotla.”
A video clip of the speech that has gone viral purportedly shows Mustafa addressing a room full of people in Malerkotla and saying that he will not allow any rally of the AAP to take place. He was allegedly responding to a remark that the AAP had organised a gathering close to where he was campaigning.
The former DGP is also purportedly heard saying that he is a soldier of the “qaum” (community) and not an “RSS agent.”
“If they repeat this a second time, I swear to God that I will go to their houses and beat them up,” he is allegedly heard saying in response to claims that AAP was trying to disrupt his gathering.
“Today, I am only giving out a warning. I am a soldier of the qaum. I am not fighting for votes, but for the qaum,” said Mustafa.
BJP national spokesperson Sambit Patra had tweeted on Saturday that Rahul Gandhi and the Congress should clarify what situation they were trying to create in Punjab by using Mustafa as a “pawn”.
To this, Mustafa responded with a series of tweets, stating that Patra should not look for his “staple diet of Hindu-Muslim” in everything. He added that he used the term “fitnon, meaning mischievous elements”, and not “Hinduon” (Hindus), in his speech.