Shot at by CAA supporter, 25-year-old dies in Aligarh hospital

Tariq Khan, who was reportedly in an anti-CAA procession in Uparkote area of Aligarh on February 23 and was allegedly shot by a Hindutva supporter Varshneya, a Hindutva leader at that time, died at the hospital of Jawaharlal Nehru Medical College, Aligarh Muslim University on Friday late night.

According to a complaint filed by Munnawwar Khan, father of the deceased, Varshneya, general secretary of Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha and his aides, Surendra Yadav, Triloki Prasad, Gopal Singh and others had fired on the protestors when they were passing through Babri Mandi area.

While three of them were arrested two days ago when the condition of Tariq worsened because of blood clot in his brain and a large number of agitated anti-CAA protesters gathered at the hospital, Gopal, who is accused of firing at Mohammad Ibrahim, another youth, is absconding.

Muniraj G, Senior Superintendent of Police of Aligarh told reporters that the post mortem of Tariq, 25 was going on and his body would be handed to his family thereafter.

“We have deployed administrative officers, police and provincial armed constabulary in the city to avoid any backlash to the incident”, said the SSP.

As per his facebook posts,  Varshneya is a supporter of Hindutva, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah.

In his post of March 10, Varshneya had compared the Congress with Corona virus and stated in Hindi, “Madhya Pradesh is free of corona virus. BJP Jindabad, Modiji Jindabad, Amit Bhai Shah Jindabad.”

The Kamal Nath government in MP is facing a crisis following the defection of some of the ministers and MLAs to the BJP in a bid to topple the elected government.

Farookh Ansari, father of Ibrahmin, who was also allegedly shot by Gopal in his left eye and who is still under treatment at the hospital of the AMU, said, “It is clear by now that the anti-CAA protestors are peacefully opposing the law and the pro-CAA people are the ones resorting to violence. ”

However, he claimed that neither Tariq nor Ibrahim were present in the anti-CAA agitation.

“Tariq was on his way home and Ibrahim had gone to buy biryani from a restaurant. There are video clips in which we can see Varshneya and his henchmen talking to each other to decide who they should target, he “claimed.