Pune: FIR against 7 for harassing Kargil veteran’s family over citizenship

The Pune Police on Wednesday filed a case against seven persons for unlawful assembly after a Hindutva group allegedly barged into a house belonging to the family of a Kargil War veteran and accused them of being undocumented migrants from Bangladesh, the Hindustan Times reported.

The family claimed that a mob of about 80 persons allegedly affiliated to a Hindutva group forcibly entered their home on Saturday night and accused them of being “illegal” migrants.

Irshad Shaikh, whose elder brother Hakimuddin Shaikh served in the Indian Army during the 1999 Kargil War and currently lives in Uttar Pradesh, said that his family had been living in Pune for more than six decades, the newspaper reported.

“We tried to explain that our family has deep roots here, and several of us have served in the armed forces, but they continued hurling accusations,” the Hindustan Times quoted Irshad Shaikh as saying.

The mob abused the family and demanded to see Aadhaar and other identity documents to prove their Indian citizenship, the family claimed, adding that some of them alleged that their papers were fake. Women and children were also allegedly forced to produce documents.

Irshad Shaikh also claimed that two men in plainclothes had identified themselves as police officers but did not intervene when the mob allegedly harassed...

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