A week after a 57-year-old Muslim taxi driver from Agra was harassed and allegedly assaulted for refusing to chant Jai Sri Ram, the main accused, Rohit Thakur, has been arrested.
The incident comes amid ongoing harassment of Muslims, with community members being hounded and forced to chant Jai Sri Ram, the Hindutva war cry, in different parts of the country.
In this particular case, a video that had gone viral on social media showed Thakur asking an elderly man named Raheesh Khan to chant Jai Sri Ram. When the cab driver expressed distress and asked him to “mind his business”, Thakur said, “In two or three days, you will have to say Jai Sri Ram.”
Thakur uploaded the video on his Facebook page with the caption, “These are the real terrorists”.
According to reports quoting Khan, Thakur, who was accompanied by another individual, assaulted him. “…When I refused (to say Jai Sri Ram), they pulled my beard and slapped me,” he said.
Alt News, meanwhile, reported that Khan, a cab driver for 38 years, had bought his own car a month ago on a loan. On the day of the incident, he had picked up tourists from Agra Cantt railway station to the Taj Mahal Metro parking. As he was parking the car, Thakur and his associate approached him.
Journalist Madan Mohan Soni, who primarily covers Uttar Pradesh, tweeted on December 2 that Thakur had been arrested by Agra Police.
On Thakur’s Facebook page, he has openly shown his support for the BJP and Narendra Modi. In a video he posted shortly after the incident, Thakur can be heard using Islamophobic slurs while filming Muslim visitors at the Red Fort. At one point, he stops a man and asks him to say Jai Sri Ram in the same manner, and the man can be seen complying.
His Facebook page carries similar videos where he is seen harassing Muslim men, forcing them to chant Jai Sri Ram or using Islamophobic slurs. In one video uploaded on November 24, he is seen loudly claiming that the Taj Mahal is actually Tejo Mahalay, a claim made by the right-wing ecosystem. While filming this, Thakur is seen trying to force a Muslim man into his frame as the man walks away.
