All You Need To Know About Radical Group Hizb Ut-Tahrir That May Soon Be Banned In India Under UAPA

The Indian government may soon ban radical Islamist organisation Hizb-ut-Tahrir (HuT) under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA), 1967, newspapers recently reported.

Translated as ‘party of liberation’, the organisation was founded in 1952 in Jordanian-ruled East Jerusalem by Palestinian Shaykh Taqiuddin al-Nabhani, as cited in The Many Faces of Political Islam: Religion and Politics in the Muslim World by author Mohammed Ayoob. The book was published in 2007 by Michigan State University.

The organisation’s stated aim is to create a global caliphate, finish Israel and free the Middle East of Western control.

It uses the land of Britain for much of its propaganda (the British site of HuT is withheld in India), but is banned in most of Middle East and Central Asia including Saudi Arabia and Egypt, as it opposes the existing states.

As per Ayoob, the HuT in Britain caters to the psychological needs of a rootless group of educated immigrant Muslims.

The National Investigation Agency (NIA) last month filed a chargesheet against 17 people associated with the organisation in Bhopal and Hyderabad, saying that they wanted to create a Sharia-based Islamic nation in India through violence.

The HuT’s operations in India came under scrutiny earlier this year when the Madhya Pradesh anti-terrorist squad (ATS) busted a recruitment module, arresting 16 people.

The ATS said that those arrested were part of the organisation’s armed wing named Harakat ul-Muhojirinfi Britaniya, members of which get training in chemical, biological, and bacteriological warfare, and were planning a terror attack.

A first information report (FIR) was filed by the MP ATS on 9 May (number 5/2023) under IPC sections 120B, 153B and 121A, and Sections 13(1)(b), 17, 18 and 18(B) of UA(P) Act.

The ATS found that at least three of those arrested were Hindu men who had converted to Islam, and several had married Hindu women and got them converted as well. One of them was Saurabh, whose father Ashok Raj Vaidya told the media that his son had got radicalised after watching Zakir Naik’s talks.

Vaidya, an ayurvedic practitioner, said he saw changes in his son’s behaviour in 2011 when he began distancing from family functions and festivities. His daughter-in-law started wearing Islamic dresses and his grandchildren began attending madrassa.

Similarly, one Abdur Rehman was earlier named Devi Prasad Pandey, the ATS found.

One of those arrested, Mohammad Waseem, was son of a renowned activist for Bhopal gas leak victims.

The ATS told the media that HuT was becoming a more dangerous group than Islamic State and was believed to have a support base in 50 countries, especially in Indonesia where it was banned in 2017.

In south Asia, it was quite active in Pakistan, despite a ban, and Bangladesh. In India, it had been active for more than a decade and was found to have organised a protest in Delhi’s Batla House area against Israel.

The case was later taken over by the NIA. Last month, the agency filed a chargesheet against 17 people in the terror module case, saying that the accused were inspired by HuT’s radical ideology of creating a Sharia-based Islamic nation in India through violence. They planned to attack police personnel and people from other communities.

As many as 44 organisations are currently banned in India under the UAPA. These include Jaish-e-Mohammad, Laskar-e-Toiba, Islamic State, Khalistan Tiger Force and Student Islamic Movement of India.

The latest to join the list was Khalistan Tiger Force that was headed by Hardeep Singh Nijjar, who was mysteriously killed in June this year in Canada.