Navi Mumbai murder case: ‘The girl would have been alive today’

Yogita Salvi, Manisha Bhoir and Sheetal Nikam at the conference. Pic/Ashish Raje

The Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) Konkan chapter held a fiery press conference at the Mumbai Marathi Patrakar Sangh (Azad Maidan) on Tuesday afternoon. The outfit focussed on the brutal, recent murder of Uran's 20-year-old Yashashree Shinde. The suspect, Dawood Shaikh, was nabbed by the police in his hometown in Karnataka, and reports stated he was being brought back to Maharashtra, yesterday.

To give this conference some context, Yashashree who worked as a data entry operator went missing on Thursday, July 25. A complaint was lodged by her father late on Thursday. Her mutilated, lifeless body bearing heinous injuries was found at Kotnaka in Uran on Friday, July 26.

Sheetal Nikam, conference anchor and activist, stated at the outset introducing the conference speakers Manisha Bhoir and Yogita Salvi as those, "who are following this case closely like so many others, and creating awareness about love jihad." There were references to the Shraddha Walkar case at the conference. Walkar, 27, was allegedly murdered by her live-in partner Aaftab Amin Poonawala in Delhi in 2022. Her body was dismembered and some remains were stored in a fridge.

Abhorrent killing

Bhoir, who is VHP Konkan chapter vice-president, highlighted, "The stomach-churning brutality that Shinde was subjected to. Her body was completely mutilated. She was killed in the most abhorrent way. Suspect Dawood Shaikh has been nabbed from Karnataka and is being brought back here. Yet, I want to remind you that a complaint was filed against him in 2019 and he was jailed under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act. Then why did he get bail? If he was not free, she would have lived."

Bhoir said this was jihad, and now she stated, "We, which includes her family, the community and larger society, demand justice." The activists also slammed the cops. Bhoir stated, "The family had approached the police to file a missing person's complaint late Thursday night. The police should have started tracking and tracing Shinde immediately. Instead, it was hours later that her body was found."

Values questioned

Salvi added, "There are some people who support the jihadis, and they are part of the system/administration. We need to weed out and do away with those supporters too." The women spoke in unison when they said that when cases like these crop up, there are inevitably questions raised about the woman's character. The woman's parents are blamed as if they are the ones who have not inculcated any values in their daughter. Salvi stated, "The killings are terrifying, the character assassination, many a time continuing even after the victim is dead, is hurtful. The criminal's/killer's parents should also be asked what values they inculcated in their child. Why are they never asked these questions? Stop the victim blaming and shaming."

In the interactive session, the VHP said they wanted a law against love jihad and scoffed at those who called the term a conspiracy. They also hit back against those who accuse them of giving this crime a communal dimension, or driving a wedge in society. "This is no conspiracy theory and we are not conspiracy theorists," they said. "This is reality. Our focus now will be to ask for a law and in this case, quick justice through fast-track courts," they ended.