Three shops selling meat and fish were set ablaze in Uttar Pradesh on Wednesday by unidentified persons days after Muslim-baiting Hindutva cleric Yogi Adityanath was sworn in as the new chief minister of the state, Hindustan Times reported.
The incident took place in the city of Hathras in India's largest state, the daily reported. Shop owners said that their stocks were destroyed in the incident.
“Unidentified persons set ablaze three shops selling fish and meat. An FIR has been registered against them,” Hindustan Times quoted Hathras Superintendent of Police Dilip Kumar Srivastava as saying.
Adityanath, a Hindu radical, was sworn in on Sunday as chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, which has a Muslim population of nearly 40 million, after newly-elected lawmakers of the Bharatiya Janata Party chose him as their leader of the legislature party in the Uttar Pradesh Assembly.
Over the years, Adityanath has established himself as a firebrand Hindutva leader. His most recent anti-Muslim statement was an endorsement of the United States President Donald Trump’s immigration ban on citizens from seven Muslim-majority nations.
Two years ago, he wanted Muslim places of worship to feature Hindu deities. “If given a chance, we will install statues of Goddess Gauri, Ganesh and Nandi in every mosque,” he was quoted by the Deccan Chronicle as saying at the Vishwa Hindu Parishad’s Virat Hindu Sammelan in Varanasi in February 2015.
