Mofakkerul Islam, the lawyer who has become the face of the violent protests at Malda’s Sujapur against the special intensive revision (SIR) of electoral rolls underway in poll-bound Bengal, on Friday announced on social media about his arrest from Bagdogra airport.
“I have been arrested from Bagdogra airport. I was at the protests against the deletion of voters that is why I have been arrested,” Mofakkerul, an advocate at Calcutta High Court, is heard saying in a gruff voice.
Police on Friday picked him up from the airport in north Bengal while he was allegedly attempting to flee. The cops allege he is the mastermind behind the violence that has gripped Malda over the SIR since a mob held seven judicial officers hostage for nine hours.
The violence that erupted since the midnight of April 1 had prompted the Supreme Court on Thursday to crack the law-and-order whip on the state.
Just about 67 km from Sujapur in Malda is Itahar, the home of Mofakkerul.In the last five months Mofakkerul has not visited his parents, who stay with his younger brother and sister-in-law in Porsa Hatkhola, Itahar, in the neighbouring district of North Dinajpur.
“In November he came for a day. After that we have not seen him or heard from him. We don’t know what he was doing in Malda. He has always helped people,” his mother, Fatima Bibi, said.
Though the cops are still wondering what the advocate and former AIMIM nominee from the Itahar Assembly constituency was doing in Malda on the night of April 1, a video has been making the rounds for the last two nights.
The video showed Mofakkerul climbing atop an ambulance in front of the Sheefa General Hospital on National Highway-34 and addressing a crowd that cheered him loudly. Some in the crowd capture those frames on their mobile phones.
That was the last that Mofakkerul was seen in public until the state CID sleuths caught him at the airport.
“He is a good speaker. Every time he comes to the high court a group follows him,” said a lawyer.
After the arrest of Mofakkerul, Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee blamed the AIMIM for Tuesday night’s incident that Chief Justice of India Surya Kant denounced during a hearing on Thursday.
Mamata had earlier accused the Election Commission and even the state Congress, which has some presence in the district, for the violence.
The apex court had termed the incident a “brazen attempt” by “antisocial elements” to “browbeat” the entire judiciary.
The social media-savvy Mofakkerul has over two million followers on Facebook.
Since April 1, most of his posts were on cybercrime cases being heard in courts as distant as Khanna in Punjab, Thiruvananthapuram in Kerala, Hyderabad and Khammam in Telangana, Tinkashi in Tamil Nadu and Raipur in Chhattisgarh. Some of the posts mention his associates were at the hearing.
None of his recent posts mention the ongoing SIR in Bengal where over 63 lakh voters have already been deleted and the fate of another 60.06 lakh names hangs in the balance.
In the Sujapur Assembly constituency, 1,34,521 voters, mostly Muslims, have been marked “under adjudication”.
The AIMIM’s Malda district unit has distanced itself from Mofakkerul. “We have heard that the lawyer was there. We do not endorse violence,” said Matiur Rahman, AIMIM’s Malda unit chief.
On the day of the incident, AIMIM chief Asaduddin Owaisi had addressed a rally in neighbouring Murshidabad’s Naoda.