Post on social media enabled case against cow vigilante Monu Manesar: Haryana Police

Police officers said that they made the arrest only after ascertaining the post was indeed made by Mohit Yadav, and not a fake account

Cow vigilante Mohit Yadav, who is known more widely as Monu Manesar, was picked up by Haryana police after it was established through social media company Facebook’s assistance that it was he alone who made an incendiary post on August 26, the police remand note has said.

Mohit Yadav, better known as Monu Manesar, was arrested on Tuesday. (ANI)

Read here: Monu Manesar on 2-day police remand for interrogation

Yadav, a member of right-wing group Bajrang Dal, has also been named in the murders of two Muslim men from Rajasthan, and had made a video in late July over a religious procession in Haryana’s Nuh --- but his arrest was not connected to either of these.

“Prior to the August 26 post, we did not have a formal case (in Nuh) that could act as the basis of his arrest,” a Haryana police official said, asking not to be named. The arrest came under sections involving those meant to punish acts of creating communal tension when Yadav posted: “we don’t care about the results… There will be only one attack and it will be the last one…” ahead of a right-wing groups’ plan to redo the abandoned Nuh rally on August 28.

Police officials said that they made the arrest only after ascertaining the post was indeed made by Yadav, and not a fake account. “Facebook provided us with the mobile phone number using which the account was created. After getting the number, further investigation was carried out in which it surfaced that the SIM card of the number was issued to a person named Mohit in Manesar. We gathered his address,” said the official quoted above.

A Brajmandal Jalabhishek Yatra was abandoned on July 31 after it led to clashes in Muslim-majority Nuh, violence that was prompted by comments made by Yadav and other right-wing extremists. Yadav also had announced participation in the protest, which became controversial since he had been absconding over the murder cases.

The violence in Nuh then spread out across other Haryana districts, leaving six people dead in all.

It was over the August 26 post that Nuh police took suo-motu cognizance and got an FIR registered under sections 153 (wantonly giving provocation with intent to cause riot), 153A (promoting enmity between different groups on ground of religion, race, etc), 295A (deliberate and malicious act intended to outrage religious feelings of any class by insulting its religion or religious belief), 298 (uttering words etc with intent to wound the religious feelings of any person), 504 (intentional insult with intent to provoke breach of peace) and 109 (abetment) of Indian Penal Code at Cyber police station in Nuh on August 26.

Officials said that after registering the FIR against Yadav, they contacted Facebook for the authenticated details of the user and mobile phone number linked with the profile from which the provocative contents were posted.

Read here: Monu Manesar being interrogated, will be produced in court tomorrow: Police

HT accessed remand papers of Nuh police submitted before a Nuh court on Tuesday evening in which it was mentioned that one of the two SIM cards recovered from the mobile phone seized from Yadav after his arrest was of the same number used for creating the profile about which Facebook had provided information, conclusively establishing his role behind the post.

Officials said that at least six members of a special investigation team of Nuh police working on the communal violence cases reached Manesar on Tuesday in plainclothes in two vehicles and waited for Yadav.

Yadav alone left home at about 10.30am to bring some groceries from a market complex in Sector-1, Manesar, which was less than a kilometre from his residence, officials privy of the development said.

They said two of the sleuths waited for Yadav to come out of the complex at separate spots. As soon as he came out, two policeman nabbed him.

Officials said that by 12.30pm, they returned Nuh and Yadav was kept at the City police station where he underwent interrogation too.

By 3.30pm, police produced him before the court of Amit Verma, judicial magistrate first class, who, after hearing arguments of counsels from both sides, ordered Yadav’s 14-day judicial custody.

In the meantime, a team of Rajasthan police headed by additional superintendent of police Himmat Singh reached the Nuh court by 4pm and sought his transit remand over the February murders of Junaid and Nasir, who were abducted, assaulted and killed before their bodies were burned inside an SUV.

Officials said that by 5pm, all legal process of granting Yadav’s custody to Rajasthan police was completed and Singh’s team left by 5pm after getting his transit remand from Verma’s court.

Read here: Cow vigilante Monu Manesar picked up, likely to be handed over to Rajasthan Police

Advocate Somdutt Sharma who had appeared for Yadav before the Nuh court on Tuesday, said Nuh police have deleted section 295A from the case while Arms Act was invoked as a regular pistol and three live cartridges were also seized from his possession after arrest. “We will produce his arms license in the course of investigation,” he said.