Indian police have made new arrests for the murder of a Hindu tailor in Rajasthan, which sparked tensions between the Hindu majority and the Muslim minority and crackdown on protests and the Internet to prevent them from escalating.
Three senior police officials said on Saturday that two Rajasthan-based Muslim men were detained for planning the Teli assassination at their tent in Udaipur, a popular tourist destination. Two more Muslims were already detained.
“We have now arrested the two brains, and we had previously arrested two men who committed the heinous crime,” said Prafulla Kumar, a senior Udaipur-based police officer.
The murder was filmed and posted online, allegedly in response to the victim’s support for a politician’s derogatory comments. The victim, Kanhaiya Lal Teli, reportedly made a post on social media supporting Nupur Sharma, a former party spokesman for Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who made anti-Islam comments in May.
Kumar said Internet services were gradually being restored and security forces remained on alert.
An angry crowd, which includes some lawyers, slapped and pushed the four defendants in the murder case when they were brought before a trial court on Saturday.
Supreme Court judges said on Friday that Sharma should apologize to the entire nation after her statements intensified religious flaws in India, angered Islamic nations and sparked diplomatic tensions.
Local media reported another incident on June 21 in which a chemist was stabbed to death in the western state of Maharashtra for allegedly supporting Sharma’s comments on social media.
“Five people have been arrested in connection with the murder of the chemist, and a search is being conducted to locate the main accused,” Aarti Singh, a regional police official, was quoted as saying by the local press.
In Afghanistan, the Islamic State militant group claimed last month an attack on a Sikh temple that killed at least two people and injured seven in response to insults directed at the Prophet Muhammad in India.
New Delhi police arrested journalist Mohammed Zubair, a vocal critic of the Modi government, who had helped draw attention to Sharma’s statements through his Alt News fact-checking website and social media.
Zubair’s bail request was rejected on Saturday and a local court sentenced him to two weeks in custody, according to a court order.
The National Investigation Agency (NIA), India’s leading anti-terrorism agency, said it was conducting an investigation into Teli’s assassination.
A senior NIA official in New Delhi said officers were questioning Muslims linked to the four accused in Udaipur to identify if they had links to militant networks.
Muslims living about 3 km from the tailor shop said they felt nervous and feared a social and economic boycott of the powerful Hindus living in Udaipur.
“I know what has been done is outrageous, but the community should not be held responsible for the actions of two people,” said Mohammad Farukh, a medical representative who lives in a Muslim-dominated area of the city.