Owner of a small eatery from Khateeka Talab Jammu became famous overnight. People started gathering at his place from early Sunday morning. His neighbours and friends were curious to see if he is one of the six slain terrorists killed in Hajin encounter.
A couple of Hindi newspapers of national repute had allegedly picked Abdul Majid’s picture and showed him as nephew of Lashkar commander Zakir-ur-Rehman Lakhvi.
Majid, who is married and have two children, sells barbecue at Khati Ka Talab in Jammu and is also associated with a religious group preaching Islam.
Here is Majid talking to a reporter:
While such an irresponsible action of the newspapers is downright unacceptable yet it also important to not label it as Islamophobic. It can be concluded from most of the comments on the source video, and even from Majid’s own words, that he was targetted because of his ‘Muslim appearance’. This too is a far fetched conclusion as there have been similar incidents in the past where media houses in order to come out with exclusives share some wrong information.
Almost two years back, in November 2015, seven people had died in a chopper crash. Among the dead was pilot Sumita Vijayan of Hyderabad. Newspapers then, quickly downloaded Sumita Vijayan’s pictures from Facebook and published them. It was soon revealed that the Sumita in pictures is some other woman from Thrissur, Kerala and that she was still alive.
Therefore, there should be no attempt to present it as a case of Islamophobia, but just another unforgivable blunder by media. AND as for Mr Majid, he is free to carry his visage anywhere in India; all thanks to the Constitution of India!