Prayagraj,

15 May (HS): On Friday, the Allahabad High Court granted bail to a group of men

accused of devouring non-vegetarian food during an iftar celebration on a boat

in the Ganga in Varanasi and then discarding the remaining garbage into the river.

Justice Rajiv Lochan Shukla issued the ruling while hearing the accused's bail

application and scheduled a hearing on May 18 for the pleas of other accused in

the case. The top court previously permitted the state government's lawyers one

week to file a counter-affidavit. In the bail application, the accused's

attorney stated that his clients were unfairly implicated in the crime and were

not listed in the FIR.

The

FIR was registered on March 16 in response to a complaint made by Rajat

Jaiswal, head of the BJP Yuva Morcha's Varanasi chapter, who claimed that the

event had harmed Hindu emotions. According to the complaint, on March 15, the

accused broke their Ramzan fast aboard a boat on the Ganga, ate meat, and then

tossed the residual trash into the sacred river.

They

were charged under several laws, including sections of the Bhartiya Nyaya

Sanhita (BNS) that prohibit defiling a place of worship, inciting religious

sentiments, and so forth. On April 1, a session’s court in Varanasi refused the

defendants bail, stating they appeared to have sought to disrupt societal peace.

Hindusthan Samachar / Abhishek Awasthi