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The Former Supreme Court judge Deepak Gupta while talking to the reporters said, The manner in which the a house was demolished in Begum Bagh, a Muslim-dominated locality in Ujjain, a day after a Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha rally was pelted with stones in the area, is “absolutely illegal and an act of a police state”.
Former Supreme Court Justice Gupta said,“This is a mockery of the rule of law. There is no power to the police to demolish structures like this,”.
“It is not as if these were the only houses constructed illegally. If the police and politicians take law into their hands and show that they have no faith in the courts, what is a common man supposed to do?”
On December 26, the house of Abdul Rafeeq was razed by the administration who came looking for suspects in the stone-pelting incident caught on video the previous day. Officially, the demolition was carried out as the structure was allegedly illegal. However, District Collector Asheesh Singh said the demolition drive was meant to hurt “criminals who resort to such acts of stone-pelting” economically.
Bhopal Municipal Corporation and the district administration demolished parts of a school owned by Congress MLA Arif Masood on the outskirts of the city in November. Just days before the demolition, two FIRs – one for promoting enmity between religions and another for violating Covid norms – were registered against Masood after he led a protest against French President Emmanuel Macron’s statements on Islam and terrorism.
While maintaining that law will take its own course, Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan had said that “those who support terrorism will not be spared” while commenting on the demolition of the school.
Sources- Indianexpress