Varanasi: A Varanasi court has sent 14 Muslim youths to jail in a 14-day judicial remand till April 1 for allegedly holding an iftar party on a boat and throwing the waste, including leftover biryani and bones, into the Ganga in the city. The accused were presented before the court of ACJM-9 Amit Yadav, with a heavy police presence late Thursday evening after regular hours. The investigating officer requested their judicial remand from Mar 19 to Apr 1. After the court approved the judicial remand, the accused were sent to jail. The defence advocate opposed the judicial remand, arguing that there was no evidence against them. Prosecution officer Deepak Kumar said that the investigating officer has recorded the statements of boatmen, who stated that all the accused forcibly boarded their boat and threatened them. Consequently, Section 308 of BNS has been added to the case, carrying a provision of 10 years’ imprisonment. After the judicial remand was approved, the defence advocate filed a bail application. The plea was opposed by the complainant’s advocates — Shashank Shekhar Tripathi, Rajkumar Tiwari and Nityanand Rai — who argued that all the accused deliberately committed the offence with the intention of disturbing religious harmony at a sacred river like the Ganga and at Panchganga Ghat, where the confluence of five rivers is believed to exist. Agreeing with the arguments of the prosecution and the complainant’s advocates, the court summoned the criminal records of the accused from the police station concerned and fixed Mar 23 as the next date of hearing.The action against the 14 accused followed a written complaint filed by BJP Yuva Morcha city unit chief Rajat Jaiswal on Monday.ACP (Kotwali) Vijay Pratap Singh said they had been booked under BNS Sections 298 (defiling a place of worship with the intent to insult a religion), 299 (deliberate and malicious acts intended to outrage religious feelings), 196(1)(b) (promoting enmity between different groups on the ground of religion), 270 (public nuisance), 223(b) (disobeying public servant’s order) and Section 24 of Water (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Act 1974.The complainant alleged, “The viral video showed that some Muslim youths consumed non-veg food in the name of an iftar party while sailing in front of Bindu Madhav Dharara temple, referring to the temple in the background as Alamgir Mosque. They later dumped the waste and bones into the river.”
