There were several terrible aspects to the Kathua case, in which the rape of a minor girl from the Bakarwal community shook the collective conscience of the nation. But what followed next was extremely shameful – a gruesome rape and murder of an innocent girl was projected as an attack on minorities, an insult to the nation, and it was used as a stick to beat Hindus with. The matter was given political, communal and every other angle which it never had. Some publicity seeking Bollywood actors and liberals came out to promote their films using this incident. These celebrities and the liberal sections of the society succeeded in painting a whole different picture of the incident than what it actually was. The Special Investigation Team of the Jammu and Kashmir Police acting under the directions of Mehbooba Mufti led PDP also played their role in distancing the focus from the vile act to everything else that was not important. The tainted hands of those involved in sensationalizing this matter were exposed one after another. The latest one in this line is Talib Hussain, a social activist and advocate who had led the agitation demanding justice for the minor girl and her family. An FIR has been filed against Talib Hussain for domestic violence and attempts to kill his wife over dowry.
The FIR had been filed after preliminary enquiry was conducted into the complaint filed by Nusrat Begum, Talib’s wife. The orders for enquiry had come from Chief Judicial Magistrate and munsiff, of Samba. The couple had been married in 2015 and have two children from their marriage. Nusrat, accompanied by her father Mohammad Tahir and about a dozen neighbours had filed a written complaint along with the court order to the police. According to the Samba SSP Anil Magotra, the FIR was registered after the neighbours told the police that Nusrat had been living in her father’s house along with her two minor daughters after allegedly being physically assaulted by her husband for dowry. The police are now planning to produce Nusrat before a judicial magistrate where her statements will be recorded under Section 164 of the Ranbir Penal Code (RPC). Talib has been booked under various provisions of the RPC including domestic violence, demanding dowry, threatening to divorce his wife and attempting to murder her. Talib’s brother has also been booked for molestation and having intimidated Nusrat Begum.
The FIR on Talib Hussain by his wife Nusrat makes a couple of things clear- that Talib Hussain was never the social justice warrior and hero he claimed to be. He was infact very good at maintaining two separate identities, one for the outside world and another ghastly one reserved for his wife. The champion of the Kathua case turns out to be as cruel if not more than the perpetrators of the Kathua rape and murder case. It would not be too much of a stretch to say that such a person would have manipulated it to suit his agenda in the past as well. The mainstream media had rallied around Talib and others of his ilk to present an even viler picture of Kathua and of India as a whole. They need to learn a lesson or two about background checks before trusting a person, but the Bollywood celebrities and media houses which have remained silent till date over the rape of a minor Hindu girl in Mandsaur by a Muslim teen can never learn, simply because they do not want to. The only people who need to understand these things are us, the common people, who need to remember these incidents and question these celebrities and opinion creators the next time they want us to follow them blindly. The new slogan should be, Justice for the Kathua victim, Justice for the Mandsaur victim and Justice for Nusrat Begum.