Ali Khan Mahmudabad arrest: Congress slams Modi govt over ‘double standards’ – ‘his other mistake is his name’
Ali Khan Mahmudabad arrest: Congress party on has slammed Prime Minister Narendra Modi led Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government at the centre over the arrest of Ashoka University faculty Ali Khan Mahmubabad over his Facebook posts about Operation Sindoor.
Ali, who teaches Political Science at Haryana-based Ashoka University, was arrested by Haryana police from his Delhi residence on 18 May and sent to a two-day remand based on a complaint filed by Yogesh Jatheri,the general secretary of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) Yuva Morcha in Haryana. The complaint was filed on 17 May.
Congress leader Pawan Khera said in a post on X that Ali being arrested for a ‘thoughtful’ post speaking against violence abd the BJP ministers facing no action for “demeaning” the armed forces brings to the fore the Narendra Modi government’s ‘double standards’.
“His only mistake is that he wrote this post. His other mistake is his name,” Khera said. “This is the state of New India under the Modi government”.
Ali, 42, was arrested under sections of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita(BNS) that deal with desition and insulting religious beliefs, family sources said. One of the charges against him is Section 152 of the BNS, which replaced the sedition law in the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and criminalises acts that endanger the sovereignty, unity, and integrity of India.
Kapil Balyan, one of Ali’s lawyers, told news agency PTI that he was produced before a court on Sunday evening and remanded in police custody for two days in a case.
In a post on X, Khera said Mahmudabad has been arrested for a “thoughtful” Facebook post. “A historian and academic is jailed not for inciting violence but for advocating against it. His crime? Daring to speak truth to power, exposing the BJP’s cynical communal narrative, and calling out the hypocrisy of chest-thumping nationalism.”
“Meanwhile, the BJP minister and their deputy CM face no action after openly demeaning the armed forces. No FIRs. No arrests. That’s the double standard of Modi’s governance,” he said.
Khera was referring to the alleged objectionable comments made by Madhya Pradesh minister Vijay Shah and the state deputy chief minister Jagdish Devda.
The Congress had claimed that Devda had said the entire Indian Army and brave soldiers were bowing at the feet of Modi. On the other hand, Shah had to apologise after his remarks linking the religion of terrorists behind the Pahalham strike with that of Col Sofiya Qureshi triggered an outrage.
“This is not about one man. It is about the slow suffocation of freedom of speech, the criminalisation of dissent, and the use of state machinery to silence intellectuals who challenge the BJP’s manufactured rage,” Khera said adding that the current dispensation fears questions, its own people.
Who is Ali Khan Mahmubabad?
When writers, professors and critics are branded enemies, the real enemy is democracy itself, he asserted and added, “We stand for an India that values debate and democracy, not dictates.”
“Mahmudabad, by the way, is the grandson of Padma Bhushan late Jagat S Mehta, who served as India’s Foreign Secretary from 1976-79, when Atal Bihari Vajpayee was the External Affairs Minister. His only mistake is that he wrote this post. And his other mistake is his name,” Khera said in the X post accompanied by a screenshot of one of Ali’s post that prompted the arrest.
Ali is the son of Mohammad Amir Mohammad Khan, popularly known asRaja Sahab Mahmudabad, who spent about forty in a legal battle to reclaim his ancestral property seized by the government under theEnemy Properties Act.Raja Saheb passed away in October 2023.
Ali’s father was the only son of Mohammad Amir Ahmad Khan, the last ruling Raja of Mahmudabad and long-time treasurer and major financier of the Muslim League before partition of India.
Ali’s mother, Rani Vijay is the daughter of Padma Bhushan Jagat Singh Mehta, who served as India’s Foreign Secretary from 1976-79, when Atal Bihari Vajpayee was the External Affairs Minister.
Ali was arrested days after the Haryana women’s rights panel sent a notice to him questioning his remarks even though Mahmudabad had maintained that they were “misunderstood” and asserted that he had exercised his fundamental right to freedom of speech.
What did Ali Mahmudabad say?
In one of the posts, Mahmudabad said that right-wing people applauding Col Sofiya Qureshi should demand protection for victims of mob lynchings and “arbitrary” bulldozing of properties.
The associate professor described the media briefings by Col Qureshi and Wing Commander Vyomika Singh as “optics”. “But optics must translate to reality on the ground, otherwise it’s just hypocrisy,” he had said.
Wing Commander Singh had briefed the media alongside Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri and Col Qureshi on Operation Sindoor.
His only mistake is that he wrote this post. His other mistake is his name.
Indian armed forces hit terror infrastructure in Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir in the early hours of May 7 under Operation Sindoor in retaliation against the April 22 Pahalgam terror attack.
