A Senseless System in India Sensationalizes Murders to Prop up its Ever Faltering Evil Machinery?

As India reels through some significant electoral shows in its different states like Himachal Pradesh, Gujarat and local but high stake general elections for Municipal Corporation of Delhi, it becomes the breeding ground of nefarious, stinky and contentious issues that are potential electoral currencies to buy back the votes to help prop up the failed system. One of the most convenient and electorally-high monetized issue is the murder case in Delhi where the accused Aftab Ameen Poonawala had ‘grisly’, ‘brutally’, ‘callously’ and ‘demoniacally’ strangled his live-in-partner Shraddha Walker and then chopped her body into 35 pieces, cold stored them into the newly bought refrigerator and kept scattering the pieces in the jungle over 18 days.

Though such type of cases in a country like India are not rare and unique but seemingly for the known reasons, it was sensationalized in such a hyper way that ever since 10-11 days before it had been first reported to the day this piece is being written, almost all the news portals, newspapers and prime time TV shows and headlines are flooded with the minutest and finer details of this case being updated within every 2-3 hours. New findings and latest trends in the case are being continuously inserted in the already informatively cumbersome case.

As indicated above the perpetrator is ‘Aftab’ and the victim is ‘Shraddha’ which makes a perfect blend to cook a spicy and palatable communal savory to be served to the public which has always been rewarding to the BJP and the right wing at least in elections. Right wing coined term of ‘love Jihad’ is already doing the rounds in the public and social media domain. Assam Chief Minister Himanto Biswa Sarma while campaigning in Gujarat for the forthcoming elections has already set the ball rolling by spewing that “If the country does not elect a strong leader like Narendra Modi in 2024, a monster like Aftab who hacked his partner’s body into pieces and was also the perpetrator of love jihad, would rise up in every city of the country.”

Ironically Himant Biswa Sarma is the Chief Minister of the State (Assam) which is among the top 5 states where domestic violence cases are not only rampant but also rationalized and normalized.

Further, an individual killing an individual assumes much wider ramifications even spilling the collateral to the community and the religion he belongs to but the gruesome and orchestrated sabotage of the newly renovated Morbi Bridge taking the toll of 150 odd people mostly women and children is just touted as one off accident that happens due the laxity of some individuals without any serious accounting of the ruling and the establishment. On the other hand, reports suggest that one in three women faces intimate partner violence in India and every hour one dowry related death is reported across the country but nobody bats an eye on these real issues the repercussions, scars and trauma of which are wide spread, pervasive and debilitating for a healthy society. Crimes against women of all age groups from infants to older ones are all time high in a country like India but only a few are intentionally sensationalized and overstated for the vested interests.

But if we observe the treatment of this case in media and political arena we see that extreme right wing trolls and their mentors in the political establishment have been single-handedly playing up this instance of brute intimate partner violence, because it involves a Muslim male and a Hindu woman. Even an Aam Admi Party MLA tried to make most of it by accusing a BJP leader named Shehzad Poonawala to be related with Aftab Poonawala. So, the idea is to sensationalize the issue to either earn immediate TRPs or to garner electoral dividends, no matter, how the episode leaves its indelible and coarse imprints on the psyche of the populace.

The other obvious objective of highlighting this very incident is demonizing Islam and Muslims by selectively picking out the individuals who coincidentally have Muslim names but the matter of the fact is that they are the very products of this Godless, hollow and corrupt ideology of liberal Capitalism which unleashes the man to be a mere two footed beast let loose to follow his carnal and basal desires to the most optimum level with the leverage of host of freedoms that are ensured and defended by the Capitalist Liberal Ideology. Aftab Poonawala may be born in a Muslim family with a Muslim name but he is a classic example of how a system can transform and melt the individuals to shape into its ideological mould. Aftab stands against everything Islam has to offer and stands for everything this rotten system envisages him to be. A person who was glued to the American crime show Dexter, further using the dating app Bumble to get as many girlfriends as he likes and to have them as their live-in partners with the legislative patronage of the system and state speaks volumes about a person who fully utilizes all the available products of this stinking ideology. Aftab may be a Muslim in name but definitely a tailored product of the Capitalist Secular Liberal system which facilitates individuals to pursue their instinctual cravings and desires to their full potentials oblivious of the fact that it may turn a thinking and rational human to a zombified monster. This is not the failing of just an individual but the deliberate handiwork of the putrid Capitalist ideology.

In a society where Islam governs as an ideology through the method of the state, these issues are non-existent or least present as Islam is a way of life enjoined by the Creator Himself for his creation (humankind) which channelizes and fulfills his instincts and organic needs through a host of solutions in a harmonized way delineating discretely the specific roles, rights and duties of the individuals and collective society. The first line of defense is Taqwa (God consciousness) and a sense of accountability that one has to meet his Creator One Day and has to be repaid for his good or bad actions resulting in eternal bliss or everlasting chastisement.
The instincts are well catered to and suitably fulfilled in a manner that ensures the tranquility and repose of the human disposition. If Aftab would have been a member of Islamic society governed by its ideology, he must have been cultured to believe in his Creator Allah rationally, observant of his actions as they are to be reckoned on a Day that has no doubt, fulfilling his procreation instinct by allowing him to marry four women at a time and avoiding the illicit or alternate evil means to fulfill this instinct. Aftab would then not be free to be a slave of his basal self but a slave of Allah to be free of psychopathic disorders let loose by hyper-sexualized, crime-inducing liberal societies. He would have been accounted and stopped the very moment he got into the Haram relationship with his girlfriend checking the gruesome act well in advance and rather would have been married off having offspring who act as an emotional shared bond between parents rather living off as partners without any responsibility and bond.

Picking out selectively one off case and sensationalizing it for its melodramatic content is another satanic plank of this rotten system to mobilize its near dead machinery. This is not the undoing and failure of one or two individuals but the bitter fruits of an ideology which is faltering and doomed to fail one day.

(وَقُلْ جَاءَ الْحَقُّ وَزَهَقَ الْبَاطِلُ إِنَّ الْبَاطِلَ كَانَ زَهُوقًا)

“And proclaim: ‘The Truth has come, and falsehood has vanished. Surely falsehood is ever bound to vanish.’” [Al Quran 17:81]

Written for the Central Media Office of Hizb ut Tahrir by
Mujahid Abu Ahmad