Muslim cleric arrested after violence over ‘I love Mohammed’ poster in Bareilly, internet suspended

Lucknow: Muslim cleric and the chief of Ittehad-e-Millat Council Maulana Touqir Raza was on Saturday arrested along with eight others in connection with Friday’s violence over "I love Mohammed" posters, in Uttar Pradesh’s Bareilly town even as Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath said his government would teach a lesson to the trouble mongers in the ‘language they understand’.

Raza and other accused persons were later produced before a local court which remanded them to 14-days judicial custody.

Police sources said that ten cases were registered in different police stations in connection with the violence and Raza was charged with rioting, inciting violence among others. Internet services were suspended for 48 hours after the cleric’s arrest.

Raza had given the call for protest against the alleged police action against some people after they pasted "I love Mohammed" posters in some parts of the state.

District officials said that 39 people were arrested in connection with Friday’s violence. ‘’We have 200 CCTV footage and we are trying to identify the trouble mongers,’’ said a senior police official in Bareilly.

He said that 22 cops were injured in stone pelting by the protesters. Some even had pellet injuries, he added.

The official said that the police had recovered live cartridges, blades and country made pistols from the Islamia Campus. ‘’We are trying to identify who was behind the violence,’’ he said.

Meanwhile speaking at an event here, Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath said that the cleric had ‘forgotten’ whose regime was there in the state. ‘’We will teach them a lesson that their future generations will remember,’’ he said.

Several people, including cops, were injured as police made lathi charge to disperse mobs, which came out on the streets in Bareilly and Mau districts to protest on Friday alleged action against 'I love Mohammed' posters in some parts of the state,

Hundreds of people, who had gathered outside a mosque in Bareilly after the special Friday prayers, tried to march toward the Islamia Ground but were stopped by the police. The crowd allegedly pelted stones and also damaged a few vehicles prompting the police to make a lathi charge to disperse them.

The controversy over the posters erupted after police booked some people in Kanpur town earlier this month when such posters came up during a procession on the occasion of Barawafat festival earlier this month. Soon such posters appeared in some other towns in UP and Uttarakhand.

In Varanasi, the Hindu seers pasted "I love Mahadev" posters in several parts in Varanasi town to what they said ‘counter’ the posters.