The residents of Mohad village in Madhya Pradesh, 30 km south of the state capital, Bhopal, no longer watch cricket matches between India and Pakistan because they are still traumatised by the arrest and trial of 17 Muslim men and two minors accused of cheering for Pakistan.

After India lost the Champion Trophy final at the Oval Stadium in London on 18 June 2017, a rumour spread about the villagers raising slogans supporting Pakistan, distributing sweets and burning celebratory crackers. The accused were booked for sedition and criminal conspiracy under the Indian Penal Code, 1860. When the police found it impossible to make a case, they dropped sedition and added promoting enmity between different groups. They persisted with the case even though the Hindu complainant was publicly saying that he made no such allegations against the Muslim men from his village.

At the time, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) had been in power for three years at the centre, Hindu nationalism was rising, and the term “anti-national” was freely used against critics, especially Muslims. The mainstream media was reinforcing the government narrative and spreading Islamophobia.

In this case, news channels called the accused men “traitors.”

“The impact of that incident is so deep that neither the villagers play cricket nor watch it on TV when India and Pakistan are playing,” said Rafiq Tadvi, the village headman.

More than six years after they were arrested, jailed, allegedly beaten, kicked, and verbally abused, and made to fight a court case that indebted them, first-class magistrate Devander Sharma acquitted 16 Muslim men (one died in 2019) after the Hindu complainant and government witnesses told the court they were forced to make false allegations against them.

“After going through all the evidence, arguments and eyewitnesses, there was no proof that the accused raised slogans and burnt firecrackers,” Sharma wrote in the judgement delivered on 9 October 2023.



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