In a shocking incident in Assam, girls in dance troop invited to perform at an Eid celebration were forced to strip and dance naked by rowdy spectators, although they managed to escape. The Eid celebration was organised by one Kuddus Ali and after the incident, the Rainbow dance group’s director Arup D Rabha filed an FIR with Boko police station regarding the incident, where he has named Kuddus Ali, Sayed Khan, Atikul Islam, Samajuddin, Jeherul Islam and Abbas Ali, along with all the members of the organising committee of the event as the accused in the case.

Read also: Girls in a dance group invited to perform in Eid program forced to dance naked in Assam

The crime and the humiliation heaped on the dance crew was carried out at an Eid function by Muslim men, however, a journalist from The Hindu deemed it fit to blame ‘Hindutva culture’ for the crime.

The Twitter profile of Neena Vyas, though not verified, is being followed by several journalists. Among those who follow are Prashant Jha of the Hindustan Times, journalists from NewsX, Quint, The Hindu etc and several others.

Neena Vyas who is a journalist with The Hindu quoted the Indian Express article that detailed the crime and said, “Another terrible episode. One more example of HINDUTVA culture? Mob tries to force woman dancers to strip at a cultural event in Assam, 2 held”.

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Interestingly, the Indian Express article she quoted mentions the names of the accused making it amply clear that the crime was perpetrated by Muslim men and not Hindu men, let alone men who apparently followed the ‘Hindutva culture’.

The Indian Express report reads:

“The two men, Shahrukh Khan and Subahan Khan, were arrested on Sunday after a case was filed on basis of a complaint registered by the cultural troupe against the organisers of the programme, which was held at a village under Chaygaon Police Station limits”.

When this fact was pointed out to her, Neena Vyas responded to it by saying that she was glad that the men had been arrested and that it was “shameful that tribal women any woman treated this way by anyone Hindu or Muslim”.

It was rather interesting to notice that Neena Vyas blamed ‘Hindutva Culture’ when she had not read the report and as soon as it was pointed out that the perpetrators were Muslims, she changed her tune to mention that ‘any woman should not be treated this way by Hindus or Muslims”.

If her first tweet was a template, one could not find any mention of “Islamic culture” in her follow up tweet.

While the Indian Express article did not mention that the function was an Eid festival, by the names of the accused it would have been amply clear that the perpetrators were Muslims. Either Neena Vyas did not bother to read the article and jumped to blame ‘Hindutva Culture’ as a force of habit and a manifestation of her deep-seated Hinduphobia, or she assumed that she would not be countered with facts.

The Hindu itself had displayed its anti-Hindu stand recently when it had gone hammer and tongs against Akshaya Patra, the organisation that provides free meals to thousands of children across the country.