Incendiary videos featuring Shambhu Lal Regar, a Rajasthan man jailed after brutally killing a Muslim labourer, reportedly recorded inside the Jodhpur Central Jail are circulating on social media and raising questions about the security breach, Indian media reported on Monday.
Last year in December, police in western India arrested Regar for killing a Muslim labourer in an apparent religious attack in the western state of Rajasthan. The arrest came after the suspect had shared a grisly video of the labourer Mohammad Afrazul being hacked to death and then set on fire. TV reports had aired video of the victim lying on the ground while a man in the foreground raved against Muslims.
Regar had raged against intermarriages of Hindu women and Muslim men but at the time, it wasn’t clear why Afrazul was singled out.
The two new videos in circulation on Monday show Regar repeating his rant against “jihadis” inside what appears to be his jail cell, NDTVreported. Wearing a hoodie, he speaks into a cellphone and reads out from a statement asking Hindus to unite against “jihadis“.
“I couldn’t bear threats to Hindu women. I have ruined my life and I don’t regret it. But I am sad about the fact that the law and the media showed illicit relationship with her and me,” said Regar in the video. Indian media reports had said that a failed relationship with a minor could have provoked Regar to commit the murder.
In the second video, he hails Prime Minister Narendra Modi, urges West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee “to not destroy the country” and asks people to forget differences to build a strong nation, Hindustan Times reported.
NDTV, while clarifying that it could not verify the authenticity of the cellphone videos, said that it raised serious questions on security and vigilance inside jails. State Home Minister Gulab Chand Kataria, according to the media outlet, has ordered an investigation into how Regar accessed a phone inside the high security prison.
Source: Dawn
