Kamlesh Tiwari, leader of Hindu Samaj Party, was shot and then hacked in his office in Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh today. Formerly, Kamlesh was in the Hindu Mahasabha but soon left it due to dissimilarity in vision with the leadership of the organisation.
Tiwari first hit the major headlines in December of 2015, when he made offensive remarks on Prophet Mohammad. He was then booked by then ruling party of UP led by Akhilesh Yadav under NSA (National Security Act).
The remarks made by Tiwari saw a major backlash and led to protest all over the country from numerous Muslim groups. Some of the protestors went so ahead they demanded Tiwari to be beheaded. However, this invoked harsh response from some Hindu groups, they said Muslim groups were trying to introduce their Islamic law of blasphemy in India.
That time’s Samajwadi Party’s spokesperson, Javed Ansari, too, asked for a strict action for insulting Prophet Mohammad.
The protest of January 2016 which took place at Kalichak, West Bengal turned violent as the Muslim protestors clashed with the BSF (Border Security Force) and local police. The protestors first vandalised the Kaliachak Police Station and then set it on fire. Tens of vehicles were burned, trains services got disoriented, and some reports also claimed that couple of temples were sabotaged too.
Tiwari defended himself by saying that he was only responding to the comments made by Azam Khan on RSS (Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh), Amaz Khan said, leader of RSS are homosexuals and that is the reason they do not marry.
Tiwari spent months in jail for his remark but was later released on bail after the Allahabad High Court’s Lucknow bench revoked NSA’s charges. However Tiwari made the headlines again in 2018 when he organised a ‘Karseva’ (volunteer service) for the construction of the Ram Temple in Ayodhya, which was already in the Supreme Court of India.
