The Polit Bureau of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) has issued the following statement on June 23.

THE CPI(M) strongly condemns the communal attack on a Muslim family in a local train on the outskirts of Delhi leading to the death of Junaid, a 15 year old student and serious stab injuries to his brother 22 year old Shakir. The third brother Hashim was also injured. The men who led the slogan shouting mob attacked them with large knives.

These young men boarded a local train at Delhi around 5 pm for Ballabhgarh, Haryana. Junaid and his younger brother are students in a Madrassa in Surat and were home on their annual visit during Eid. Some men who got on at Tughlaqabad started abusing them using filthy communal language. When they protested they were brutally attacked amidst shouting of communal slogans.  Junaid was beaten to death in the train. The mob tried to pull out Shaikr’s beard. He was stabbed in three places. The badly injured victims were not allowed to get off at Ballabhgarh. They were thrown off the train. Some people later found them and took them to the hospital.

This communally motivated crime shows that the BJP-RSS rule is leading to communal mob actions. There have been earlier incidents of violence against Muslims on trains but the government has not acted to uphold the law of the land, thus directly encouraging the growth of such communal hate crimes.

CPI(M) Polit Bureau members Brinda Karat and MP Md. Salim and Delhi secretariat member Asha Sharma met the family in hospital in Delhi this morning. It is shameful and condemnable that the government and specifically the prime minister and the home minister have maintained a deafening silence and not a single officer has been deputed to even visit the family.

CPI(M) demands action against the guilty. It demands adequate compensation for the family. It calls for strong protest actions against such communally motivated crimes, especially in public spaces.