Ground Reports
Ahsan Mewati Pakistani from a screengrab from one of his videos.
A resident of Pakistan, who falsely described himself as living in the Mewat region in India, is being regarded as a key instigator of attack on a Hindu procession in Haryana’s Nuh district on 31 July.
Each of those videos amassed lakhs of views.
In one of the videos posted a day before the procession, Ahsan can be seen telling Meo residents of Mewat — called Mewatis — to beat up Hindus to teach them a lesson.
He says, “This Monu Manesar is coming to Mewat. He should be killed. Why are Mewatis so scared? These Hindus should be beaten and taught a lesson.”
He further abuses the Hindu community and says Muslims are not scared to even slit throats.
“If Monu enters Mewat, then kill him. Either kill or get killed. If you die, you will be called a martyr and get Jannat,” he says, and adds, “Hindus shiver when they see tip of a sword. But we Meos cab stab and slash without fear.”
While several social media users have downloaded and posted the video, which can be seen here, it’s been pulled down from YouTube.
A message flashes, “This video has been removed for violating YouTube’s policy in harassment and bullying”, if one tries to access it now.
The account came widely under notice after the attack, which killed two home guards on the same day. Others including Pradeep Sharma and Abhishek Saini, sustained severe injuries in the attack and succumbed later. Two others, including a shop owner Shakti Singh and a cleric named Mohammed Saad, were killed in retaliatory violence that followed.
While his address mentioned on his social media account said ‘Alwar’ in the past few days, it now says ‘Pakistan’. As per information mention, he started his YouTube account in 2019 and posted more than 250 videos already.
Most of his social media activity seems to be sleazy. Some of his most popular videos are titled ‘Sania made a dirty video’ and ‘intoxicated by youth, she sold her dignity” (translated from Hindi-Urdu).
On the evening of the attack in Nuh, Ahsan posted a video celebrating it. He played a video of the mob chanting ‘Allahu Akbar’ and gleefully remarked, “What a day! It was so much fun. These Allahu Akbar chants filled my chest with pride. It has swelled from 36 inches to 40 inches….The best part was the Allahu Akbar chants.”
News reports have now revealed that the user is from Bahawalpur in the Punjab province of Pakistan. In his past videos, he indeed has accepted many times that he is a resident of Pakistan, and his ancestors migrated from Mewat to Pakistan during partition.
Besides Ahsan, several other YouTubers have caught attention for using the platform to incite hate against Hindus and instigating Mewatis to attack the procession. One of them is Arif Mewati, who has deleted several of his videos made ahead of the attack. Like Ahsan, Arif relies heavily on sleaze to increase his follower count.
Other influential accounts in the area actively throwing challenge at Bajrang Dal and Monu Manesar, such as Mewati YouTuber, seems to have deactivated after the attack.
Manesar, whose real name is Mohit Yadav, is a Haryana-based leader of Bajrang Dal, the youth wing of Vishwa Hindu Parishad. He leads the cow protection cell for the organisation, in which volunteer ’gau rakshaks’ typically act as vigilantes and intercept vehicles of suspected cow smugglers taking them for illegal slaughter.
The ‘gau rakshaks’ usually work as informers of the police, and sometimes, controversially, accompany the cops in raids.
Mewat, dominated by Meo jaati that is almost entirely Islamised, is a hub of cow slaughter activities. Manesar is a hated figure among Mewatis, who accuse him of vigilantism and harassment of Muslims in the name of cow protection.
Swarajya has earlier reported that Punjab and Haryana high court pulled up Haryana police chief over illegal cow slaughter activities in Nuh, observing that "the offences are being committed by hardcore smugglers, fully trained and that too in a well planned manner on large scale in an organized way."
A court-appointed amicus curiae in the case observed that Nuh "is a paradise for beef traders.