An Indian cricket fan watches the first match between India and Pakistan International Cricket T20 World Cup Super 12 stage in Dubai, live on a television screen at an electronic store, in Chennai, India, 24 October 2021.
Pakistan hammered India by 10 wickets to claim a famous win over their great rivals
Like millions of others around the world, Nafeesa Attari was glued to her screen as India played Pakistan in their opening match of the T20 World Cup.
The schoolteacher from the northern Indian city of Udaipur watched as Pakistan won the match by 10 wickets in what was a clinical and emphatic win.
Days later she was arrested and held in a police cell. Her apparent crime: her WhatsApp status celebrating Pakistan’s victory.
She is among several Muslims in India who have been arrested or detained for supporting Pakistan in the recent match – raising fresh concerns about freedom of speech in the world’s largest democracy.
Observers argue that these arrests are the latest weapon in the governing Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) agenda to target Muslim minorities, a charge the government strongly refutes.
Pakistan hammer India by 10 wickets to claim famous win “Jeeeet gayeeee… We wonnn,” Ms Attari wrote, over an image of some of the team’s players in her WhatsApp status.
Her post was spotted by one of her students’ parents, who sent it to others before it went viral on the messaging service.
Ms Attari was fired from her teaching job, and arrested under a section of the Indian Penal Code, which criminalises “assertions prejudicial to national integration”.
In an interview with a local TV channel, she appeared visibly distressed as she apologised for causing offence.
Nafeesa Attari was arrested for 'celebrating' Pakistan's win
Nafeesa Attari was arrested for celebrating Pakistan’s win “Someone messaged me [replying to my status] and asked if I was supporting Pakistan. As the message had emojis and there was a playful atmosphere, I said yes”, she said.
“This doesn’t mean I support Pakistan. I am an Indian, I love India.” Having secured bail, she is back home with her husband and young child, and is fighting the charges.
“What the police have done is absolutely wrong.
If someone makes a mistake or if you don’t agree with someone, that’s not a crime or anti-national”, her lawyer Rajesh Singhvi said. “This is against the constitution and our laws.”
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Rajendra Parmar, a member of the hardline Hindu nationalist group Bajrang Dal, had reported Ms Attari to the police.
“These people should go to Pakistan. You’re living in India, earning here but you’re celebrating their win,” he told the BBC.
Mr Parmar said he had no regrets about making the complaint. “This should be a [lesson] for her. She’s a teacher in a school.
What kind of education will she give those children?”
His comments cut deep into the visceral hostility many in India and Pakistan feel towards each other, ever since the two nations were created after the partition of British India in 1947.
And relations are particularly tense in Indian-administered Kashmir, where an insurgency against Indian rule has been under way since the late 1980s.
Cricket – ICC Men"s T20 World Cup 2021 – Super 12 – Group 2 – India v Pakistan – Dubai International Stadium, Dubai, United Arab Emirates – October 24, 2021
A cricket match between India and Pakistan is never an ordinary affair A group of medical students in Kashmir have also been charged – under a strict anti-terror law – for allegedly rooting for the Pakistani cricket team.
In a video which has surfaced online, a man, allegedly former BJP lawmaker Vikram Randhawa, can be heard saying the students should be “skinned alive” and have their degrees and citizenship cancelled for raising pro-Pakistan slogans on Indian soil.
Mr Randhawa has been charged by police for hate speech, and has been reprimanded by the BJP, which has asked him to apologise within 48 hours for these remarks.
While the party is distancing itself from the use of such severe language, other senior members of the BJP have condemned those supporting Pakistan, with some saying it should be considered a crime.
