Five men including former Delhi BJP spokesperson
and Supreme Court lawyer Ashwini Upadhyay were detained by the Delhi Police in
connection with the allegedly communal slogans raised in Delhi’s Jantar Mantar
on Sunday.
Apart from Upadhyay, the others arrested have been
identified as Deepak Singh Hindu, Vineet Kranti, Preet Singh and Vinod Sharma,
the head of an outfit called Sudarshan Vahini, The Indian Express quoted a
police official as saying.
Also Read | Congress’s political health, ‘the family’ discussed at Kapil Sibal’s dinner
The detention occurred as part of a late-night
operation and the police are now preparing legal documents before making their
arrest, the police official said.
The allegedly communal slogans raised in a protest
march organised by Upadhyay against “Colonial-era laws”. The rally saw hundreds
of people attending. Videos of the event, that flooded social media, showed
people shouting threating slogans aimed at Muslims.
The police identified all those detained using
footage from the event.
One of the detainees, Deepak Singh Sindhu, claims
to be the president of an outfit called Hindu Force. Sindhu was detained from
his home in Delhi’s Karawal Nagar.
Meanwhile, the National Commission for Minorities
issued a notice to Delhi’s deputy commissioner of police on Monday about the
incident and asked the official to apprise the commission of the action taken
on the matter, reports PTI.
Also Read | Why CPI(M) is celebrating India’s Independence Day in a ‘bigger way’
The minorities commission took suo motu cognisance
of the incident after videos of it spread on social media.
On Monday morning, police registered a case against
“unknown persons” under Section 153-A of the IPC (promoting enmity between
groups) and Section 188 of the IPC (disobedience to order duly promulgated by
public servant) as well as the DDMA Act pertaining to violation of COVID
guidelines.
Meanwhile, Maulana Mahmood Madani, chief of Jamiat
Ulema-e-Hind has written to Home Minister Amit Shah and Delhi Police
Commissioner Rakesh Asthana and demanded stern action against those found guilty
of raising the communal slogans.