Kamlesh Tiwari

Kamlesh Tiwari (16 January 1969 – 18 October 2019) was an Indian politician who founded the Hindu Samaj Party in 2017. who protested, with some people calling for beheading Tiwari. The main accused was granted bail by the Supreme Court on 25 July 2024.

Early life and career Tiwari was born in Para Kothba village, in Uttar Pradesh's Sitapur district, in the early 1970s. In 1980, his family moved to the nearby town of Mahmoodabad, when his father got a job as a priest at the local Ram-Janki temple. The family stayed at an accommodation provided within the shrine. Tiwari grew up there during the heyday of the ram temple movement in Ayodhya.

Tiwari was attracted to the Hindutva form of Hindu nationalism in the 1990s. He organized groups of young Hindutva warriors who marched from Lucknow to Ayodhya and participated in the demolition of the Babri mosque at a disputed religious site. He later joined the Bajrang Dal, and was said to admire leaders such as Ashok Singhal, Lal Krishna Advani, Sadhvi Rithambara, and Uma Bharati.

He claimed to be the president of Hindu Mahasabha, and attempted to gain a Lok Sabha seat, from Faizabad, in the 2019 Indian general election, but was defeated both times. In response to that statement, on 2 December 2015 Azam Khan, a member of the Samajwadi Party, reportedly labelled members of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) – the ideological arm of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) – as homosexuals, because they don't marry. The next day, Kamlesh Tiwari responded to Azam Khan's statement by calling Mohammad a homosexual. (the death penalty being reserved in India for the "rarest of rare" crimes), with some demanding that he be "beheaded" for "insulting" Muhammad.

On 3 December 2015, Tiwari was arrested in Lucknow by Uttar Pradesh police, for his remarks on 2 December, and charged under the National Security Act by the Samajwadi Party-led Uttar Pradesh state government. He was jailed for several months for his comment, having been charged under Indian Penal Code sections 153-A (promoting enmity between groups on the grounds of religion and doing acts prejudicial to maintenance of harmony) and 295-A (deliberate and malicious acts, intended to outrage religious feelings of any class by insulting its religion or religious beliefs).

The protests demanding capital punishment for Tiwari triggered counter-protests by Hindu groups who accused Muslim groups of demanding enforcement of Islamic law and laws against blasphemy in India.

Murder On 18 October 2019, Tiwari was murdered by Farid-ud-din Shaikh and Ashfak Shaikh, in his office-cum-residence in Lucknow. The assailants came dressed in saffron kurtas to give him a box of sweets marked with the address of a sweet shop in Surat city in Gujarat.

According to the post-mortem report, he was stabbed 15 times and shot once.

Investigation

Two ISIS suspects previously detained by the Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) of Gujarat, had indicated that they wanted to kill Kamlesh Tiwari in 2017. The Al-Hind Brigade, a lesser known group, claimed responsibility for the death of Tiwari. By 19 October 2019, six accused of being involved in the murder of Tiwari—including Khurshid Ahmed Pathan, Faizan Pathan, and Maulana Mohsin Sheikh—were detained by the Surat Police, Gujarat ATS, and Uttar Pradesh police. They also confirmed that Tiwari's comment on Muhammad was the motive for his murder.

Court proceedings On 9 April 2024, the Allahabad High Court denied bail to the accused in the case. This decision was overturned on 25 July 2024 when the main accused was granted bail by the Supreme Court from the two judge bench of A. S. Oka and Augustine George Masih.