“They beat us with iron and wooden rods. They hit my head, back and elbow even though we were trying to have a dialogue with them,” said Savan Zalariya, a theatre artiste and professor of political theatre at Ahmedabad University, about a book-reading session disrupted on August 27.

The “silent reading session” organised by the Students and Youth Collective, Ahmedabad (SYCA), at AUDA Garden in Vastrapur had turned into a confrontation after a group of people allegedly associated with the Bajrang Dal and Vishva Hindu Parishad arrived at the venue, raised slogans, made communal remarks and assaulted participants.

The group tore copies of I Am Malala by Malala Yousafzai and The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank that participants had been reading. It turned violent, with several participants allegedly beaten with sticks and rods, according to SYCA members.

The reading session had been organised in solidarity with a school in Ahmedabad that had faced objections over the inclusion of the two books in its reading programme. Organisers said around 40-50 people attended the event, while around 30-40 activists arrived wearing saffron scarves and carrying bats and sticks.

Police subsequently registered an FIR in which the complainant named Hiren Rabari and Jimit Rabari. SYCA members alleged that both were Bajrang Dal members and among those leading the group. “Hiren Rabari was speaking the most amongst them all. He only took his name in front of us,” said Swati Goswami, an independent consultant and educator who is part of SYCA.

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Hiren Rabari, whose Instagram bio notes “Bajrang Dal,” posted a video of the incident with the caption, “When the Bajrang Dal activists came to know about the event, they reached the spot. After a face-to-face discussion, the Congress and Cockroach Janata Party activists could not answer the questions raised by the Bajrang Dal activists. They then allegedly tried to escape by using the national anthem as a shield and even moved during its rendition. They used the national anthem to evade the questions and, in doing so, grossly insulted it. At the end of the national anthem, when the Bajrang Dal activists raised slogans of “Bharat Mata Ki Jai” and “Vande Mataram”, none of those who held Islamic or leftist ideologies joined in chanting the slogans.”

The FIR invokes provisions of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita relating to criminal intimidation, voluntarily causing hurt, unlawful assembly and rioting while armed with a deadly weapon or an object capable of causing death.

G M Chaudhri, Station House Officer at Vastrapur police station, told Newslaundry, “We have registered the FIR and have arrested three people who have now got bail. The police are looking for the two people (Hiren and Jimit) named in the complaint. Investigation is underway.”

Why was the reading session organised?

On August 11, several parents gathered outside the Anand Niketan school in Shilaj after a class 8 student reportedly found a hard object in his mouth while eating lunch served at the school canteen the previous day. According to The Indian Express, the student was eating bhindi, dal, chapati and rice when he allegedly swallowed part of the object and handed the remaining piece to his teacher.

The Ahmedabad District Education Officer (DEO) subsequently issued a show-cause notice to the school seeking details about the incident, including the agency supplying the food, the school’s food-safety and quality checks, the action taken after the incident and measures to prevent a recurrence.

The DEO also ordered an inspection and sought a report based on statements from students and parents, as well........

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