Narrative collapses: Islamists go silent after Meerut Police arrests Mohammad Suhail for molesting a burqa-clad woman

In a grim yet telling reflection of how online propaganda distorts reality, a disturbing video from Meerut recently went viral, showing a burqa-clad woman being molested in broad daylight. Instead of treating the woman’s ordeal with the sensitivity and solidarity it deserved, certain Islamist handles on X (formerly Twitter) wasted no time in amplifying the clip—not to demand justice, but to craft a narrative. One that falsely suggested a systemic targeting of Muslims in India.

The playbook was familiar: highlight the victim’s religious identity, omit crucial context, and weaponize suffering to stir communal unrest and push a political agenda. “A biker behaved in a highly inappropriate and lewd manner toward a Muslim woman who was walking with her daughter on lane,” read one viral post.

Without waiting for facts, these social media operatives painted the incident as yet another proof of the fictional “genocide” they constantly allege against Indian Muslims. That the woman was targeted for being a Muslim was the underlying message a section of social media users tried to imply.

But the narrative came crashing down once Meerut Police arrested the accused—a man named Mohammad Suhail. Far from being a representative of any so-called ‘majority aggression,’ Suhail is himself a Muslim. This key fact blew a gaping hole in the carefully crafted disinformation campaign.

Yet, unsurprisingly, the same propagandists who had passionately tweeted the video and communalised the issue suddenly fell silent. No retractions. No apologies. No outrage over Suhail’s crime. The victim, it seemed, was only useful as long as she could be exploited as a pawn in their ideological chess game. Some of the shameless social media users defended themselves claiming they never “communalized” the incident. However, going by their history, it is appeared little more than a shoddy attempt at trying to play safe after their propaganda was exposed.

This episode exposes a larger, disturbing pattern: a section of Islamists and their fellow users on social media are less interested in justice and more focused on political opportunism. They routinely hijack genuine cases of suffering—not to advocate for victims, but to score points against the Indian state, the Hindu majority, and Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government. Such exploitation of vulnerable individuals, particularly Muslim women, undercuts real efforts toward communal harmony and justice.

Ironically, in their rush to blame Hindu society, these online propagandists end up shielding the actual perpetrators if they share the same religious identity as the victim. Their concern is selective, their activism performative, and their silence when facts don’t align with their agenda—deafening.

What happened in Meerut is tragic and reprehensible. The victim deserves justice, and Suhail, regardless of his religion, must face the full force of the law. But the manipulation of this incident to push communal hatred reveals the true face of those masquerading as ‘human rights defenders’ on X. In their zeal to malign India, they end up trivializing the trauma of the very people they claim to protect.

Justice cannot be communal. Nor can it be selective. And truth, no matter how inconvenient, must always come first.

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