Hindu temple faces bomb threat from Muslim man; police claims accused was 'mentally unstable'
Araria, Bihar, India 
20 January, 2024
Case Summary
On 21 January 2024, one day before Ayodhya's Ram Mandir Pran Pratishtha ceremony, a Muslim man named Intekhab Alam issued a bomb threat targeting the Ram Janmabhoomi Temple. He posed as the Muslim gangster Chhota Shakeel to deliver the threat. The Bihar police arrested the 21-year-old man, Intekhab Alam, for threatening to “blow up” the temple. Speaking with Press Trust of India, Superintendent of Police of Araria Ashok Kumar Singh said, “The man had on 19 January 2024 dialled 112, the number on which citizens can seek emergency help. He stated his name was Chhota Shakeel and that he was a close aide of Dawood Ibrahim.” Following this, he threatened to blowup the Ram Janmabhoomi temple in Ayodhya. The police claimed that the accused had no criminal record and was mentally unstable. Confirming the arrest of the accused, Superintendent of Police of Araria Ashok Kumar Singh said the caller has been identified as Intekhab Alam. He was arrested from his home at Balua Kaliyaganj in the Palasi police station area located in the Araria district. However, the senior police officer added that in view of the “sensitivity of the issue”, a case was registered at the Palasi police station. The police also seized his mobile phone. Singh added, “As soon as the call was received, details were shared with the cyber cell. The mobile number from which he had made the call was found to be registered in the name of his father.” Notably, these threats occurred a day before the Ayodhya Ram Mandir Pran Pratishtha on 22nd January 2024. Ayodhya Ram Janmabhoomi is a site in Uttar Pradesh deeply revered by Hindus as the birthplace of Lord Rama, considered an incarnation of Vishnu and a central figure in the Hindu faith. The temple held immense religious and cultural significance, existing on this sacred land for centuries before being desecrated in 1528. At that time, the Mughal emperor Babur ordered the destruction of the original temple and the construction of Babri Masjid on its ruins, causing generations of dispute and pain within the Hindu community. Hindus endured decades of legal and social hardships, fighting relentlessly in courts for the right to reclaim and restore their holy site. Their struggle ended with the Supreme Court of India’s verdict in 2019, legally restoring the site to the Hindu community and permitting the temple’s consecration.
Why it is Hate Crime ?
This case has been added to the tracker under the primary category- Hate Speech against Hindus. Within this, the subcategory selected is- Violent Threats. Violent threats, explicit, implicit or implied, is the most dangerous form of hate speech since it goes beyond discriminatory and prejudicial language to express the intent of causing harm to an individual or a group of people based on their religious identity and faith. There could be several different kinds of threats that are issued to Hindus based on religious animosity. An explicit threat would mean the direct threat of violence towards an individual Hindu, a group of Hindus or Hindus at large. Physical violence, death threats, threats of destruction of property belonging to Hindus and threats of genocide would mean explicit threats against Hindus for their religious identity. Implicit threats may not be a direct threat but implied through the use of symbols of actions – for example – in the Nupur Sharma case, other than explicit threats, there were also implicit threats when Islamists took to the streets to burn and beat her effigies. It implies that they want to do the same to Nupur Sharma – thereby is considered an implicit threat. Violent threats can be delivered in person, through letters, phone calls, graffiti, or increasingly through social media and other online platforms. It would be important to understand that a threat – explicit or implicit, online or offline – to an individual who happens to be a Hindu does not qualify as a religiously motivated threat. Such a threat, while vile and dangerous, could be owing to non-religious reasons and/or personal animosity. To qualify as a religiously motivated threat, it would need to exhibit an indication that the individual is being targeted for religious reasons and/or owing to his/her religious identity as a Hindu. This case stands as a clear instance of a religiously motivated hate crime, as the Muslim man, Intekhab Alam, threatened to blow up the Ram Janmabhoomi Temple in Ayodhya. For Hindus, temples serve as sacred centres of worship, community gathering, and daily rituals that embody the living faith of millions, regarded as the abode of the Hindu deities' presence. The Ram Janmabhoomi Temple in particular holds unparalleled significance, representing a civilisational renaissance for the Hindu community after centuries of struggle; Hindus fought relentless social and legal battles to reclaim this site, desecrated by the Islamic tyrant Babur, where invaders demolished the original temple and erected a mosque over it, with their perseverance culminating in the landmark Supreme Court verdict that restored the sacred land and enabled construction of the grand Ram Mandir, marked by its Pran Pratishtha (consecration) ceremony on 22 January 2024. The accused issued this bomb threat just a day before the Pran Pratishtha on 21 January 2024, exposing profound hatred not only towards Hindu temples in general but specifically towards Ram Janmabhoomi, a beacon of Hindu revival and cultural resurgence. In general, the act of threatening to bomb or blow up any Hindu temple demonstrates extreme animosity, as these sacred spaces represent the core of Hindu worship, devotion, and community life; such calls to destroy them reveal a visceral hatred for Hinduism itself. This deliberate timing and targeting transform the threat into unambiguous hate speech and a hate crime driven by the perpetrator's deep-seated religious animosity towards Hinduism and the Hindu community. Such threats constitute clear hate speech that instils fear and intimidation in the hearts of the Hindu community, who live with the constant dread that their temples face desecration or destruction. This act disrupts communal harmony while aiming to intimidate and wound Hindu sentiments, marking it as a textbook case of religiously motivated animosity. Another point to note is that the police tried to downplay and whitewash the communal nature of the crime by claiming that the accused was mentally unstable. This claim represents a common trope used to deflect attention from the religious motivations behind hate crimes against Hindu places of worship, portraying the act as stemming from mental illness rather than religious animosity. Authorities often downplay such communal crimes and often attribute the offence to the accused's mental health. This narrative has appeared repeatedly in cases targeting Hindus and their religious symbols, obscuring the true intent of religious hatred. Many times, police minimise incidents of low-level communal crime to protect their jurisdiction from scrutiny. They frequently cite the accused's mental instability as the cause, aiming to prevent any flare-up in the area following the initial offence. However, this explanation rang hollow in this instance. If the accused was truly mentally unstable, why did he target only a Hindu temple with a bomb threat and not a mosque or other non-Hindu places of worship? This selective targeting exposed deep-seated hatred for Hinduism and its sacred spaces, confirming the religiously motivated nature of the offence. Therefore, since this case met the parameters of a religiously motivated offence, it was added to the hate crime database of the tracker.
Case Status
Arrested
Perpetrators Details
Perpetrators
Muslim Extremists
Perpetrators Range
One Person
Perpetrators Gender
male
Sources 
