Gujarat: Muslim clerics held for sharing rules of animal sacrifice on social media

The Special Operations Group (SOG) of Gujarat’s Bharuch District has arrested two Muslim clergies over alleged social media posts in which they had described rules of animal sacrifice as per Islamic law.

According to reports, a celeric named Maulvi Abdul Rahim Rathod was booked and arrested for “promoting enmity” after he had shared a post on social media describing the Islamic “ritualistic procedure” for Qurbani (animal sacrifice) ahead of the Eid al Adha (Bakrid festival).

The police authorities justified the arrest by claiming that the post could “provoke a breach of communal peace.”

Now, days after Rathod’s arrest, another Muslim clergy named Shabbir Ali Patel, who is the vice-president of Darul Uloom Barkat-e-Khwaja in Amod, has been arrested.

According to the SOG press release, Patel had drafted the “controversial message” and handed it over to Rathod to circulate on social media.

Commenting on the case, the Bharuch Superintendent of Police (SP) has defended the arrests, stating that the police are keeping a “24×7 watch on cyberspace with no tolerance for any attempts that breach the peace in the district.”