Mathura: Self-proclaimed cow vigilante (gau rakshak) Deepak Tiwari, along with his associates, intimidated a street vendor into shutting down his biryani shop, claiming no meat should be consumed in the holy town of Vrindavan in Uttar Pradesh‘s Mathura district.
In a video that surfaced on Wednesday, June 17, Tiwari could be heard shouting “Jai Jai Shri Ram,” as he approached the vendor. He demanded that the vendor show the contents of the biryani. After forcefully opening the lid. “Boti hai yaha boti hai. Badiya kar raha hai bhai tum toh. (There’s meat here, you’re doing a good job here),” he says sarcastically.
“Yeh dukaan bilkul band hojani chahiye. Lekar jao, samajhgaye (This shop must be completely shut down. Take it away, understood),” Tiwari said.
Hindutva workers have repeatedly enforced religious norms, targeting Muslim-owned shops across Uttar Pradesh and beyond.
Earlier in February, a right-wing worker forced an elderly Muslim shopkeeper and his employees to shut down his mutton shop in Ghaziabad by threatening to “set the store on fire” if it remained open on Tuesdays. The man, identified as a leader of Rashtriya Hindu Veer Sena, Satyam Pandit, claimed that the shop is not allowed to sell meat near a temple on Tuesdays.
“Agar Mangal se dukaan khuli dikhi toh aag laga dunga ek minute mein (If I see the shop open on Tuesdays, then I will set it on fire in one minute),” he said.
In Uttarakhand, women residents of Khatima city raised slogans and staged a dharna strongly objecting to the opening of a muslim-owned shop opposite a temple. One resident reasoned that “these people” spit, defecate and litter in the area by dumping their leftover food and garbage.
A Muslim-owned unisex salon in Rishikesh was forced to close before its official opening after a Hindutva organisation, Hindu Shakti Sangathan, accused it of being a “centre of immoral activity.” The workers raised communal slogans and demanded that all unisex salons across the state be shut down. Accusing the Muslim barbers of “love jihad,” the leader Raghvendra Bhatanagar claimed that they lure “gullible” Hindu women and force them to convert to Islam.
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