Manzoor Ahmad from Kashmir’s Hamhama region has been selling garments in Mussoorie since 1971. Ahmad, who is among the five oldest trader families in the town, had never faced any objection from locals, untill recently after India lost to Pakistan in the Champions Trophy final.

On Wednesday, Ahmad faced the ire of the Mussoorie BJP youth wing and the Hindu Jagran Manch when they forcibly shut down his shop after they had found a video appreciating the Pakistan Army posted by the shop-owner on Facebook.

“After getting his (Ahmad’s) shop closed, we and the local traders’ body (the Mussoorie Traders & Welfare Association) went to the police station to file a complaint against him,” Dharampal Singh Panwar, the president of the BJP youth wing in Mussoorie, told The Indian Express.

Rajeev Rauthan, Mussoorie police station SHO, said Ahmad had also come to the police station to file an application about his Facebook account having been hacked.

He said the alleged “anti-national post” could no more be seen on Ahmad’s Facebook page. The Mussoorie police seized Ahmad’s phone and submitted it to the cyber cell to verify whether his Facebook account was hacked, reported the newspaper.

According to the report, a concerted effort to get Kashmiri traders ousted from Mussoorie started on June 18, when India lost to Pakistan in the Champions Trophy final and three Muslim boys were allegedly seen on the Mall Road shouting “Pakistan zindabad”.

On June 20, the local traders’ body in Mussoorie asked the Kashmiri traders to leave the town by February 28, 2018. However, Ahmad and four other older Kashmiri traders were “allowed to stay”, the president of the traders’ body Rajat Aggarwal said.

Ganesh Joshi, the BJP MLA from Mussoorie even wrote to Uttarakhand chief secretary S Ramaswamy, asking him to ensure that "all Kashmiri vendors had gone through through verification as it was necessary to ensure national security."

"If these anti-national activities are ignored, they will break the confidence of nationalist people and give more encouragement to those involved in conspiring against India," he wrote, reported The Times of India.

In a similar case, a police complaint was filed against some dental college students from Jammu and Kashmir for raising pro-Pakistan slogans in Uttar Pradesh’s Meerut. According to police, the accused also uploaded an objectionable picture of the Indian cricket team on social media after the ICC Champion Trophy final.

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