Haryana chief minister Manohar Lal Khattar has been demanding the release of one Vishal Jood who is presently in jail in Australia.
Jood, a youth from Kurukshetra in Haryana, was arrested in Sydney on 16 April for a series of hate crimes against the Sikh community.
Khattar has even spoken to foreign minister S Jaishankar and sought his help on the matter.
A statement release from the director of public relations, Haryana government said that:
The government also claimed that "anti-national forces" beat up Jood and got him "arrested under a false case". Several right wing websites and social media accounts have been carrying out a campaign demanding Jood's release.
This article will try to answer two questions:
The claim that Vishal Jood is being targeted for "saving the national flag from Khalistanis" is misleading if not completely false.
In a statement the New South Wales police said that he was charged with “three counts of 'affray', three counts of 'armed with weapon with intent to commit indictable offence', two counts of 'destroy or damage property' and 'assault occasioning actual bodily harm in company of others'".
According to a report in Seven News, a prominent News channel in Australia, Jood has been arrested in connection with a series of violent gang attacks in Sydney. The channels quotes the police as alleging that "Sikhs identified by their turbans were targeted due to tensions in India".
"Vishal Jood was behind this rampage and a series of other hate crimes in Harris Park," the channel said, showing CCTV footage of a group of men attacking the windshield of a car using a baseball bat.
The channel mentions three hate crimes that took place:
16 September 2020: A man walking on Brisbane street was hit on the head several times with a baseball bat and then kicked when on the ground by a group of about five men.
14 February 2021 a range rover driver was attacked at Marion Street by a group of men wielding sticks and other weapons.
28 February a group of people travelling in a Chrysler were attacked at Kendall Street by up to 10 men.
The channel further claimed that irrespective of what happens on these charges, Jood faces deportation as his visa has expired, though a few reports in Indian media said that he has a valid student visa.
Nowhere in the police probe has it come up that the victims of these crimes were in any way responsible for any act of desecration against the Indian flag. So the argument being put forward by those defending Jood - that he was reacting to an insult to the Indian tricolour - doesn't quite hold.
In fact those defending him also haven't put forward any evidence that the specific people targeted in the hate crimes acted against the national flag.
Haryana government's demand for his release seems to stem from three different political considerations.
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