A Samajwadi Party worker was arrested on Saturday for allegedly instigating an elderly Muslim man to claim in a video that he was beaten up by four youths who also chopped his beard and asked him to chant ‘Jai Shri Ram’ in Loni area of Ghaziabad.
Ummaid Pehelwan Idrisi, absconding since Wednesday when an FIR was lodged against him at the Loni Border police station, was nabbed from Delhi on Saturday, a Ghaziabad police official said.
“The accused, identified as Ummaid Pehelwan, was held near the LNJP hospital in Delhi by a team of Ghaziabad police. He is being brought here for further proceedings in the case,” Ghaziabad Senior Superintendent of Police Amit Pathak said.
The FIR, filed against Idrisi on the complaint of a local policeman, alleged that he had ‘unnecessarily’ made the video — in which Abdul Shamad Saifi narrates his ordeal.
It was made with an intention to ‘create social disharmony’ and shared through his Facebook account, the FIR said. He was booked under IPC sections 153A (promoting enmity between groups on ground of religion, class etc), 295A (deliberate and malicious acts, intended to outrage religious feelings of any class by insulting its religion or religious belief), 504 (intentional insult with intent to provoke breach of the peace) and 505 (public mischief).
A separate FIR was lodged against him on Thursday evening in Bulandshahr district that charged him and around 100 others with violation of the COVID-19 norms by holding a public gathering on June 16, the officials said.
Bulandshahr resident Saifi, who had made communal allegations in his video on June 14, had earlier on June 7 alleged in a complaint to the Ghaziabad police that he was assaulted by four youths on June 5 after being abducted by them and confined in a room in a secluded field in Ghaziabad’s Loni area. On being asked about Saifi’s allegations, Mr. Pathak had said earlier that the elderly Muslim man had made no communal allegations in his original complaint.
