A village panchayat chief in western Uttar Pradesh forced a Hindu woman to beat her male Muslim friend with her shoe and tie a rakhi on his wrist after catching her riding pillion on his motorcycle.
Video clips of Thursday’s incident, circulating on social media, also show both the woman and her friend being slapped by a group of men. Police on Saturday registered a case against Kamlesh Patel, panchayat chief of Faridpur village in Bareilly district who is also an alleged cow vigilante.
The chief minister of the state, Yogi Adityanath, had been among the first to stigmatise inter-community relationships with the “love jihad” theory, which alleges a conspiracy by young Muslim men to woo Hindu women to convert and radicalise them.
The woman, a BA third-year student, and the young man were allegedly waylaid by Patel and about 10 aides on an isolated stretch of a highway off Chainpur village. Patel, his aides and the couple live in villages that fall within a 5sqkm area in a neighbourhood about 340km west of Lucknow.
In the video clips, a man resembling Patel is heard abusing the couple and asking the woman to beat her friend with her shoe while two men are seen holding the friend firmly by his arms. The man resembling Patel hands her a rakhi and asks her to tie it on her friend’s wrist.
Police sources said an aide to Patel had shot a 30-minute video of the incident and posted clips on social media sites to warn young men and women off socialising with their peers from outside their communities.
Officers quoted the woman as saying in her complaint: “We could make out from their conversation that someone had told them on the phone that we were on our way. Patel was telling someone on the phone that he had stopped us and was teaching us a lifelong lesson.”
She says she followed Patel’s orders “hoping they would let us go”, and adds that Patel got her friend “to touch my feet and promise he would never meet me again”.
Patel told reporters that as an elected representative, he had a responsibility to prevent people from disturbing “social harmony”.
Bareilly senior superintendent of police Muniraj G said: “The police have booked Patel and started a probe.”
Sub-inspector Brajpal Singh, the investigating officer, said: “I have visited the area and taken the statements of the accused, the victims and eyewitnesses. We have booked Patel and (unnamed) aides for illegally confining the young couple, attacking them with criminal intent and threatening murder.”
An officer said that Patel often calls the police to inform them about alleged cattle smuggling and accompanies them during the operations, but in all the instances bar one the accused have turned out to be the cattle’s owners.