Less than a day after sharing photos of Muslim men accused of rioting and attacking a Hanuman mandir in Ranchi last Friday (June 10), the Jharkhand Police withdrew the photos. The backtracking comes after the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM) and the Congress (partners in the ruling alliance) criticised what it termed was “police overreach”.

The BJP on Wednesday slammed the blatant ‘minority appeasement’. BJP legislature party leader Babulal Marandi accused the Hemant Soren government of going soft on the rioters who attacked and looted business establishments belonging to Hindus, vandalised public vehicles (watch this), attacked a Hanuman Mandir and injured several policemen in Ranchi after the jumma namaz Friday.

Ranchi Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) Surendra Jha and several other policemen suffered grievous injuries at the hands of murderous Islamist mobs who took to the streets to protest alleged insult to their Prophet by two BJP spokespersons. The police were compelled to open fire, which resulted in deaths of two Muslim men.

The police named 22 persons and hundreds of unidentified ones in 25 FIRs on charges of arson, rioting, unlawful assembly, damaging public property, attacking police and creating communal disharmony on Friday itself. The police also circulated a poster with photos of the rioters on social media, appealing to people to identify them and inform police of their whereabouts.

But immediately after that, the Congress, which protects its Muslim vote bank, launched an attack on the government it is part of in Jharkhand. Congress spokesperson Alok Dubey termed the police action (of circulating posters of the rioters on social media) immoral and demanded that the police withdraw them.

JMM spokesperson Supriyo Bhattacharya, who is also the party’s principal general secretary, said that the police’s move (of circulating photos of the rioters) “will increase hatred in society”. “These issues need to be handled sensitively. Even the courts have ruled in the past against naming and shaming the accused,” he added.

Under pressure from the ruling coalition partners, the police backed down and withdrew the posters. BJP’s Ranchi legislator C P Singh accused the state government of going soft on the rioters. “Despite identifying the rioters, the police have failed to arrest most of them so far. The police, on instructions from the JMM and Congress, are going soft on the rioters,” he said.

Muslim organisations have condemned the police firing and have asked the government to “stop harassing innocent Muslims” or face intensive protests across the state. That is seen as a warning by the Muslim organisations, who wield a lot of influence under the current dispensation in Jharkhand, against police action on rioters.

Meanwhile, the father of a 15 year old who died in the police firing has filed a police complaint seeking action against the policemen who ‘killed’ his son. Parvez Alam, the father of deceased Mudassir, claimed that his son was fired upon from the terrace of a Mandir. As if on cue, the Congress has started demanding that police investigate if anyone fired on the rioters from inside the Mandir.

Mudassir’s mother went a step further and labelled the police who fired on her son as ‘kafirs’ who need to be punished. In this video (an interview to a news channel) she is heard saying that she is proud of her son who became a martyr for the cause of Islam. She also says that no power in the world, including the government, can stop the march of Islam.