The Pune police have arrested seven members of a radical Hindu outfit for allegedly lynching a 28-year-old Muslim IT professional, who had reportedly posted derogatory pictures of Chhatrapati Shivaji and Shiv Sena chief Bal Thackeray on a Facebook page.
Identifying the lynched IT professional as Shaikh Mohisin Siddiqui, police said on Wednesday that he was bludgeoned to death by seven people — aged between 19 and 24 years — on Monday night, allegedly belonging to the Hindu Rashtra Sena, a radical Hindu outfit. Shaikh was returning along to his rented flat in Pune’s Hadapsar locality after offering prayers at a mosque, when the seven youths beat him to death.
After Shaikh’s murder, the crime branch sleuths swiftly investigated the case and found that the Hindu Rashtra Sena (HRS) was behind the crime. They soon tracked down seven HRS-linked youngsters who had allegedly lynched Shaikh on Monday night.
Siddiqui, a native of Solapur who worked as an IT manager with a private firm in Pune, had earned wrath of the HRS, after he allegedly uploaded the derogatory pictures of Chhatrapati Shivaji and Bal Thackeray on his Facebook page and circulated the same on WhatsApp link on Saturday.
The derogatory photographs had triggered communal tension in Pune, where the activists of Hindu outfits had indulged in violence during the weekend and damaged nearly 150-odd public transport buses and private vehicles. The Pune city had also observed a bandh over the issue on Sunday.
The Pune police have, meanwhile, booked seven arrested youngsters under sections 302 (murder), 307 (attempt to murder) and 147 (rioting) of Indian Penal Code.