Man held for tearing pages of Quran

Members of the public caught a 21-year-old man tearing the pages of the Quran and dumping them on the footpath near the Grand Sigma Mall on Cunningham Road, Central Bengaluru, on Saturday evening. They thrashed him before turning him over to the police.

Sheikh Irfan Ahmed appeared to have become contemptuous of his community and religion after the woman he loved was married off to another man. Ahmed is a fabricator by training and lives in Lingarajapuram.

This was not the first time that Ahmed tore and dumped the pages of the Quran. On May 3, he had done so in front of the Vidhana Soudha. A passerby filmed the incident on his mobile phone and uploaded the video to social media. The video went viral. The Vidhana Soudha had registered an FIR in the matter and were searching for Ahmed.

In Saturday’s incident, Ahmed argued with passersby when they questioned him about what he was doing. The argument soon turned into fisticuffs and police were summoned. Later, tension prevailed outside the jurisdictional High Grounds police station as hundreds of people gathered there. Police took the help of a local NGO to pacify the crowd.

Curiously, Ahmed remained mum when police sought to know the reason for his behaviour. They then summoned his father for questioning.

The father told the police Ahmed was upset with his community and religion as he failed to marry a Muslim woman. Her family had assaulted him and married her off to another man. The incident left Ahmed traumatised. He believed his community and religion played the villain in his love life. Ahmed’s family got him admitted to Nimhans but his condition didn’t improve. He remained depressed and behaved abnormally.

The High Grounds police, which produced him before a magistrate who sent him to jail, would seek his custody on Monday. The Vidhana Soudha police could also seek his custody.