Mainstream WeeklyThese days, if an option is put to Muslims to choose between security and reservation in government contracts, what may be their choice? Most probably, safety and security would be preferred first, not the reservation. Parliamentary Affair Minister Kiren Rijiju while slamming the Congress party over the issue of Muslim reservation in Karnataka in the Parliament at the same time the Nagpur Municipal Corporation (NMC), under heavy police security and drone surveillance, demolished the home of Fahim Khan, a leader of the Minority Democratic Party (MDP) who has been charged with sedition in connection with communal violence in Nagpur. Though the house is registered in the name of Khan’s mother. Khan is among the over 100 persons, mostly Muslims, arrested for the violence. Local Muslims of the area have accused the police of arbitrary arrests and bias towards the community. Recently, a bench comprising Justices Abhay S Oka and Ujjal Bhuyan frowned upon the manner which the houses were bulldozed within 24 hours of serving notices without the time to appeal. The bench observed that "it shocks our conscience how the residential premises were demolished in a high-handed manner. The manner in which the whole process has been conducted is shocking. Courts cannot tolerate such process. If we tolerate in one case it will continue."
Coincidentally, it was a day when a team was sent by the Sambhal SDM to investigate the construction of Zia-Ur-Rahman Barq’s house (MP from Sambhal). Also, Zafar Ali (President Managing Committee of Shahi Jama Masjid) was booked under nearly a dozen sections of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS), including some that carry a sentence of life imprisonment. These include Section 230 (crime of giving or fabricating false evidence) and Section 231 (act of giving or fabricating false evidence with intent to cause someone