The gruesome murder of Kamlesh Tiwari has sent shock-waves through the country. The cold-blooded murder which had links with ISIS is a massive failure of the UP government’s security machinery. The same cabal which under the garb go free speech passed on anti-India statements has maintained a stoic silence. However, things would have been a lot different had Kamlesh Tiwari belonged to a minority community. Unsurprisingly, the usual suspects haven’t flinched an eye about Tiwari’s gruesome murder on social media despite Tiwari receiving death threats from the radical Islamists for over a year and ironically, social media played a pivotal role in duping an unsuspecting Tiwari through a fake account.
A certain ‘Rohit Solanki’ befriended Tiwari on Facebook who was later found out to be Ashfaq who is an accused of murdering Kamlesh Tiwari.
The Gujarat ATS seemed to have cracked the case and have revealed some shocking details. It stated that a conspiracy was hatched where Ashfaq through a fake Facebook account of ‘Solanki’ befriended Tiwari under the garb of joining Tiwari’s Hindu Samaj Party. Ashfaq used to converse with Tiwari through the Facebook ID and on a fateful day, Tiwari was expecting Rohit Solanki at his office as Ashfaq had set up a meeting with him on the pretext of him joining his party.
Ashfaq duly arrived at Tiwari’s office and conversed with Tiwari for about half an hour after which he sent Tiwari’s servant out to fetch cigarettes. Ashfaq pounced at this opportunity and slit his throat and stabbed him multiple times. Tiwari’s servant who arrived at the office just some minutes later found Tiwari lying in a pool of blood with Ashfaq having escaped.
The murder was extremely well planed as the assailants entered Tiwari’s office in saffron-clad Kurtas with a box of sweets which contained knives and pistols. The killers had been plotting Tiwari’s murder for over three years and it is believed that Rashid Ahmed Pathan, who returned from Dubai to Surat, motivated his brother Moinuddin Ahmed Pathan and his aide Ashfaq Hussain to go to Lucknow to assassinate Tiwari for allegedly making objectionable comments on the Prophet in 2015 in response to Azam Khan’s remark on RSS and its Karyakartas.
It seems that the Right to Free Speech is a luxury which only the minority communities are allowed to practice as when Tiwari belonging to a majority community exercised his Right to Freedom of Expression, over 1,00,000 radical Islamists demanded his head and four years later, their wish came true. Ever since Tiwari’s statement on the Prophet, he has been receiving death threats ranging from ISIS to the likes of Asaduddin Owaisi.
Social Media has acted as a major proponent in inciting radical Islamists to murder Tiwari. Ashfaq who also had a fake Aadhar in the name of Rohit Solanki was the culmination of the campaign to finish off Tiwari that started on social media. After his comments against the Prophet, various Imams called for his head with statements like: “Kamlesh Tiwari has offended Muslims across India and he needs to be punished. We cannot hear any such words against our prophet. The sentiments of Muslims should be respected…”, Haji Ehsaan, a leader of the Ittihad-e-Millat, a Muzzafarnagar based Islamic organization, told TOI. Samajwadi Party leader Javed Ansari went a step further and demanded the death penalty for Kamlesh Tiwari, as though India was some Islamist Arabic nation following Sharia law.
Another Islamic radical, AIMIM Chief Asaduddin Owaisi had threatened Tiwari by claiming that the latter had invited his doom by speaking against the Rasulullah. In a video which has been shared multiple times on social media, Owaisi can be seen saying “Woh zaalim, woh kutta jo Uttar Pradesh mein baith kar Allah ki shaan mein gustakhi kiya, yaad rakh. Tu aaj jail main hai magar duniya tere liye chuhe ki bil ki tarah ban jayegi. (That dog who is sitting in Uttar Pradesh and speaking such things against the Allah, remember, you are safe in jail but the world will become a rat’s hole for you).” He further threatens that by speaking against the Rasulullah, you (Kamlesh Tiwari) have invited your doom.
The series of events leading up to Tiwari’s murder shows how easy it is to dupe people through social media and we should be all the more cautious, and private with our lives. The atmosphere is so polarized on social media that anyone can be a victim of these nefarious affronts. We don’t know how many Solanki’s are on our friend list, and who is targeting us, they can be murderers, rapists, or even terrorists, the vulnerability of people on social media is worrying.