Madhya Pradesh: Mob forces Muslim woman to remove Burkha, case registered

A mob on Saturday in Bhopal’s Islam Nagar harassed a Muslim woman riding pillion with a Hindu boy on his scooter. In the video, shot by one of the men who had assembled with the mob, the woman was forced to take off her veil after she was stopped in the middle of the road and surrounded on all sides. The video, which is now viral on Twitter, depicts the helpless Hindu boy requesting the mob to let the couple go, as a few men can be heard asking the woman to strip out of her veil and hijab. The boy then asks the woman to fulfill the mob’s request so that the two can safely walk out of the situation. As the woman objects, visibly weeping, she can be heard saying that that the men were shooting her video. The mob says that she had brought “dishonour” to the community with her act. 

"A man and the woman came to Islam Nagar in the afternoon. Some people stopped them and asked her to take off her hijab and show her face. It is suspected that the people believed the man was Hindu and the girl Muslim," police officer RS Verma told news agency PTI.

Men film weeping woman as they ask her to remove her veil 

As the woman ultimately strips out of the veil and the Hindu boy hands it over to the man shooting the video, he can be heard pointing out that she was in jeans. The mob later asks her to remove her hijab as they kept filming the incident the entire time. They label the woman ‘a disgrace’ for accompanying a Hindu man on his bike. A man further states that these ways would not suffice in Islam Nagar. As the couple is harassed in broad daylight, the woman cries profusely and the man is seen hugging her to console her. 

Reports suggest that the Bhopal police did not file an official complaint on the matter. Law enforcement officers informed a news outlet that reached out for the comment that the boy belongs to Hindu faith and the woman on the bike with him was Muslim, and so the crowd forced them to stop. The police had responded to the incident, although they let off the men in the video harassing the woman with a verbal warning.