Mumbai, (IANS): Veteran film celebrities Javed Akhtar and Paresh Rawal have condemned the lynching of a police officer in Srinagar and another incident in Haryana, asking people to think “where are we going”.
“Lynching of an officer in Kashmir and four innocent Muslims in Haryana. Brothers and sisters, we all need to think calmly where are we going,” Akhtar tweeted on Saturday.
A mob had stripped and lynched 57-year-old Deputy Superintendent of Police Muhammad Ayub Pandit, in a grand mosque of Srinagar, triggering widespread outrage; while a teenager was killed and three of his friends injured in an attack by a group of persons in a train in Haryana.
When a social media user questioned Akhtar: “Officer was just a officer… But that four people were Muslims… Where we are going Javed ji?”, the celebrated writer responded: “That officer’s name was Ayub but what matters is that he was a police officer who was lynched by a Muslim mob in Kashmir.”
BJP MP Paresh Rawal wrote: “Muhammad Ayub is lynched just outside mosque on Friday and in the holy month of Ramadan. For Muhammad Ayub, where are award wapsi jerks and liberal louts and the whole termite clan?”
Jewellery designer Farah Khan Ali, who often comments on social issues, reacted: “We are living in times where mobs are taking the law into their own hands lynching innocents be it Dadri, Rajasthan or Kashmir, etc. Sad times.
“We the liberals are all here Mr Rawal. The question is — be it Dadri, Rajasthan Kashmir, etc, where are the law enforcers? Why don’t you condemn them?”
Meanwhile, filmmaker Onir said: “It’s a shame… What we are turning into.”