All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) leader Mufaqrul Islam was arrested at Bagdogra airport on Friday after he was named as the main conspirator behind the April 1 violence at Muthabari in West Bengal’s Malda during protests against deletion of voters as part of the intensified Special Electoral Roll Review (SIR).
Videos posted on social media allegedly showed Islam giving an inflammatory speech on Wednesday when a mob held eight judicial officers involved in the SIR hostage for more than eight hours and attacked their cars. The second accused, Akramol Bagani, was arrested on charges of uploading incendiary videos to YouTube.
In one of the videos, the authenticity of which Hizb ut Tahrir has not been able to verify, Islam can be heard saying that they do not bear the responsibility of maintaining sectarian harmony. In another video, he allegedly said: “We will not disperse unless the district magistrate and police superintendent come and tell us that our names are on the voters’ list.”
Additional Director General of Police, K. Jayaraman, Islam is a resident of Itahar and is registered as a voter in Raiganj Assembly constituency. “He is one of the leaders of AIMIM and appears to be a lawyer also. The CID was tracking him and some other suspects after the Muthabari incident. The CID arrested him at Bagdogra airport and informed us. He was trying to fly to Bengaluru,” Jayaraman said.
He added that 35 people have been arrested so far in the case since Wednesday. “We have recorded 19 cases across Malda. Islam has been named in three such cases.” He said Islam was on his way from Kolkata when he stopped at Murshidabad and delivered speeches before arriving in Malda. “We will no longer allow any illegal activity.”
He referred to the allegations of delay in rescuing judiciary personnel, and said that they have sufficient security cover, but they cannot use force due to the presence of women and children among the demonstrators. “We are investigating the reason for the delay.”
On Thursday, the Independent Electoral Commission directed the National Investigation Agency (NIA) to take over the investigation into the violence from the police. Jayaraman said the NIA has not contacted them yet.
Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee said Islam’s arrest exposed the conspiracy behind the violence in Malda. “The Election Commission of India transferred 483 of our officers and appointed new ones. But our CID tracked down the main conspirator. We have long maintained that AIMIM and the BJP [Bharatiya Janata Party] They are trying to create unrest in Bengal. Congress and the Left are also involved. But the common people will give befitting reply to all of them,” Banerjee said at an election rally in North Dinajpur.
Lok Sabha member Asaduddin Owaisi led AIMIM has so far nominated 12 candidates for the April 23-29 elections in West Bengal in alliance with Humayun Kabir’s Janata Unnayan Party. The Trinamool Congress suspended ruling Kabir after he laid the foundation stone of a mosque on the lines of Babri Mosque in Ayodhya in Murshidabad in December.
Banerjee, who campaigned in Muslim-majority parts of Murshidabad and Malda on Thursday, claimed that most of those removed from the voter list are Muslims.
There were new protests against voter deletion on Thursday. Maulana Muhammad Shahjahan Ali Qadri, the Indian Secular Front candidate from Mathabari, was arrested along with 17 others, including his two sons, on Thursday on charges of disturbing the peace, obstructing government employees from discharging their duty, destroying public property, etc.
