Ghaziabad Incident: Abdul Samad’s Family Contradict Police Claim of Selling Taweez

New Delhi, 17 June 2021 [Fik/News Sources]: Family of Abdul Samad, the elderly victim of alleged hate crime in Loni, Ghaziabad, has rejected police claims that he sells Taweez or Amulets and those who assaulted him were his clients.

“The police is wrong in saying that my father used to sell ‘taweez‘ (amulets). No one in our family does this business. We are carpenters. The police are not saying the right thing – let them investigate and prove it,” Babloo Saifi, Abdul Samad’s son, told NDTV.

Abdul Samad was beaten up by a group of men last week in Uttar Pradesh’s Loni bordering Delhi. He alleged that he was forced to chant Jai Shree Ram. His beard was also cut by the attackers. Video of him being assaulted by some individuals went viral on social media. But the police ruled out communal angle and filed a case against a number of people including a news portal for posting tweets about the incident.

Police have arrested three people and claimed Abdul Samad knew them already. “The men, who were upset with him over the amulets, had called him,” Ghaziabad police officer Iraj Raja said in a video statement after there was massive uproar on social media.