Desecration, damage or demolition – in part or total – of a place of worship is a crime of first order. It is the outcome of the worst sort of simmering communal hatred amounting to fascism. The case turns rather serious when members of the state machinery, men in khaki in particular, take part therein or play mute spectators. More often than not, it does happen in the plural society of India, particularly when the case is related to the Muslim minority.
The heat of the ‘targeted’ police action in Chhawni Mosque, Tonk (Rajasthan) on 12 July 2013 had hardly subsided when the wall of a mosque at Kadalpur in Noida was demolished allegedly by the orders and in the presence of SDM Durga Shakti Nagpal on 27 July 2013. The tahsildar and some police personnel were also present on the spot. The Akhilesh Yadav government suspended Nagpal on the grounds that her alleged action of demolishing a mosque could have caused communal tension in the area.
But thanks to the media persons, who care more for TRPs than for factual reporting, Nagpal is now being projected as a victim. Without bothering to visit Kadalpur to find out the ground reality, the media persons are projecting the case as one of the sand mafia that is active in Uttar Pradesh. Nagpal is said to have issued orders for crackdown on the hideouts of sand mafia, and therefore her suspension for taking a rash decision to demolish the mosque is being presented as an act of mafia revenge. Spurred by the inflated media reports, unexpected quarters are coming to the fore in support of the suspended IAS officer. Congress chairperson Sonia Gandhi has written to Prime Minister to intervene in the case.
Politicisation of the case can be gauged with the fact that Aam Aadmi Party chief Arvind Kejriwal offered his party ticket to Nagpal and asked her to resign from central services and contest election against SP chief Mulayam Singh Yadav from his Mainpuri parliamentary constituency. It is no surprise that to Kejriwal, who all through his association with Anna Hazare and even after launching his own political party has been claiming to have the objective of rooting out corruption from society, the charge of demolition of a mosque does not fall under the purview of corruption. This is politicisation of crime.
With the report that chargesheet has been filed against the suspended IAS officer, it is hoped that the Akhilesh Yadav administration will not go by the double standard of media and follow the case in the natural course so that the aggrieved villagers of Kadalpur may get justice.