Islamophobic Remarks :
Hardline Hindutva politician Sangeet Som hails from Meerut, Uttar Pradesh. He currently represents the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party as a Member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA) for the Sardhana assembly constituency. He is serving his second term as a Meerut MLA.
Som, who was raised in a wealthy family of land-owning Thakurs, is well-known for his remarks in the community that disparage Indian Muslims.
Som is well-liked among the right-wing Hindus. Several Hindu right-wing organizations helped him receive the Mahathakur Sangharshveer and Hindu Hriday Samrat awards.
He stands accused of encouraging anti-Muslim violence in the wake of the 2013 Muzaffarnagar riots, which claimed 50,000 lives and killed at least 62 people, most of them being Muslims. Because of his participation in the disturbances, Som was charged under the National Security Act.
It all began on August 27, 2013, when a motorcycle accident occurred in Kawal village, Muzaffarnagar. One motorcycle was being ridden by a Jat named Sachin, and the other by Shahnawaz. They got into a fight. There were heated exchanges. Following the fight, some Jat lads took vengeance by going to the Muslim section of the hamlet and fatally stabbing Shahnawaz. This infuriated the local Muslims, who captured and executed Sachin and his cousin Gaurav, two of the Jats.
Within days, a phony video appeared on social media showing two boys being brutally murdered by a vengeful mob. Sangeet Som had been spreading the video, claiming that the cousins Sachin and Gaurav had been killed for trying to protect their sister’s honor from the Muslim teenager Shahnawaz, who had been making fun of her for a long time.
Som was charged by the Justice Vishnu Sahai Commission, which was established to look into the Muzaffar Nagar riots, for his provocative comments and distribution of a phony video clip, respectively, that sparked the communal unrest in Muzaffarnagar.
He was scheduled to screen film footage of riots for a documentary in January 2017. In this instance, he was later given a clean sheet.
Charges against Som and other BJP leaders were dropped in March 2021 as a result of the Yogi government’s request to have the cases withdrawn from the local court.
Som frequently engages in scare tactics in an effort to incite hostility toward Muslims. He had claimed that many Hindus were emigrating from Kairana, a region in Haryana’s Mewat district with a mainly Muslim population. Nevertheless, based on a report they presented from the ground, the National Commission for Minorities determined that there had not been a significant Hindu migration to the area.
Speaking about the Taj Mahal in 2016, Som called it a blemish on India’s heritage, erected by traitors. Despite his reputation as a fierce, outspoken opponent of the trading and eating of beef, Som was a co-founder of Al-Dua, a company that exported beef.
Sources :
https://indianexpress.com/article/india/muzaffarnagar-riots-bjp-mla-up-7117491/
https://indianexpress.com/article/who-is/who-is-sangeet-som-taj-mahal-history-muslims-hindu-4893208/