As many as 20 Muslim leaders, including women were arrested by the police on Sunday afternoon after they gathered in Ahmedabad’s Juhapura area to initiate a march without permission in response to the BJP’s former spokesperson Nupur Sharma’s statement on the Prophet.
Police tried to convince them to return home, but when they did not agree and tried to proceed, police had to use a mild lathi-charge to disperse the mob.
Ahmedabad Zone-7 Deputy Commissioner of Police B.U. Jadeja told the media, “Since Saturday evening, fake messages were in circulation on social media about a protest march to be organised in the Juhapura area. To ensure that no untoward incident occurs, police were deployed well in advance in the area.”
Police expected a large number of women to join the march, so female officers were also deployed in the area.
The arrested Muslim leaders were taken to Vejalpur police station in Ahmedabad.
In another development, Surat police have arrested five persons for printing and circulating posters of Nupur Sharma. These posters were posted in Kadarshani Nal Road area in Surat city, they had even circulated video of posters on social media.
In the video and posters they had printed, “Now we need to turn Gujarat into Uttar Pradesh and Jharkhand
Surat’s Deputy Commissioner (Zone-3) Sagar Bagmar told the media that these posters were printed and circulated with an intention to create communal enmity in the society, based on technical surveillance, these five persons were identified and arrested by the police.