5 men enter mosque, thrash people offering prayers in Gurugram village

GURUGRAM: A mob of around 200 people allegedly barged inside a mosque at Bhora Kalan village on Tuesday night and thrashed four persons offering prayers, apparently incensed by their decision to get repairs done at the mosque.
Police have filed an FIR against five men, but no arrests have been made so far. The accused, police said, are absconding.
Prayers were on at 7.15pm when the men, allegedly armed with sticks, switched off the lights and thrashed four persons, including a teenager, who were offering namaz.
Police said the FIR was registered on a complaint filed by former Armyman Nazar Mohammad, who alleged four people were offering prayers in the mosque when the mob thrashed them with sticks.
Five policemen have been deployed at the intersection leading to the mosque in the village.
Jaye Khan (74), who was offering namaz at the time, said the mob switched off lights, lifted a chair and flung it at them. "They then locked the prayer room and threatened us with expulsion from the village for carrying out repair work at the mosque," Khan said.
Police said they have recovered a phone from the spot, which may belong to one of the accused. Three of them, according to police, have been identified as Rajesh Chauhan alias Babu, Anil Bhadoria and Sanjay Vyas.
There are only four Muslim families in the village, which is home to more than 19,000 people.
A few villagers, Khan alleged, have a problem with them offering namaz in the local mosque and insist they go to Pataudi for prayers. "Pataudi is around six kilometres from here. They ask us to go there to offer namaz. We have built the mosque on our land," he said.
Nasir Hussain (19), who was also allegedly assaulted by the mob, said this was not the first time they faced an attack in the village. "When we started repairing the mosque to plug rainwater leakage on Monday, a few locals asked us what was going on. We told them that we were carrying out repair work as water was leaking into the mosque when it rained. They came again on Tuesday morning to enquire. We tried to convince them that we were just carrying out repair work," said Hussain, a PG student at a college in the city.
Muslim families in the area alleged that they had been facing harassment during festivals for several years. "Our grandparents told us that our families have been living in the village since 1810. Even Partition could not break us," lamented 31-year-old Shakeel, a resident of the area.
However, some village refuted the allegations made by Muslim families, saying they were letting outsiders enter the village.
"They invite people from Mewat and UP to the village. They want to expand the mosque. We have been noticing it for a long time. We don't have any problem with them, but such acts will be opposed," said a shopkeeper at Bhora Kalan.
Village sarpanch Yajvinder Sharma said he had been trying to promote unity in the village. "When I learnt about the incident and reached the spot, police had already arrived. If someone is doing wrong, I call it wrong."
An FIR has been lodged against five persons at Bilaspur police station under IPC sections 147 (rioting), 149(unlawful assembly), 295-A (acts intended to outrage religious feelings), 323 (voluntarily causing hurt), 506 (criminal intimidation).
"The five accused are absconding. There are some anti-social elements who are trying to create a hostile environment in the village. We will arrest them soon," ACP (Pataudi) Harinder Kumar said.