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On the morning of Eid-ul-Fitr, March 21, a Station House Officer in Uttar Pradesh’s Mainpuri district told a gathering of Muslim worshippers at a decades-old Eidgah in Kurawali that their prayers would be stopped. “Nahi hone dunga,” SHO Lalit Bhati declared in a video that subsequently went viral on social media. When Shakir Hussain, the Eidgah’s muttawali (caretaker), told the officer that namaz had always been performed there and asked to see the government order being invoked, Bhati responded that the prayers were being offered “awaidhanik roop se” (unlawfully) and that there was “saashan ka adesh” (a government order) to that effect. The order was never produced.

What followed was a 20-minute standoff. Local Hindu residents came forward to tell the SHO that they had no objection to the prayers being offered. Community members intervened to prevent the situation from escalating further. Eventually, senior officials stepped in, and the namaz was offered inside the Eidgah. The controversy, however, did not end there.

The official version that emerged later attempted to reframe the episode. SHO Bhati told the Indian Express that his objection was specifically to prayers being offered outside the Eidgah, at a chabutara (raised platform) belonging to one Gyan Singh, located roughly 300 metres away. He claimed the previous year’s prayers had been held at that spot, and that the police had advance information that the same might happen again. SDM Neeraj Dwivedi denied that any threats had been issued, calling the situation a “misunderstanding” and asserting that the worshippers had been informed a day in advance that namaz should be offered inside the Eidgah. This sanitised account, however, sits uncomfortably with the SHO’s own words captured on video. The opening salvo of “nahi hone dunga” carries no spatial qualifier about inside or outside; it is categorical. Reports from multiple news outlets, citing the viral video, also attribute to the SHO the words “mein yahi gaad dunga” (I will bury you here), a statement that,........

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