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Recently, Raveena Tandon was involved in a fake allegation of drunken driving with her driver. Reporter Mohsin Shaikh reported on X (formerly twitter) that Raveena Tandon, in Bandra at 9:19PM had hit a Muslim woman with her car.
The sequence of events between Raveena Tandon and Muhammad, as reported by Mohsin Shaikh
Muhammad, residing in Bandra, allegedly claimed in a video by Mohsin Shaikh, that his mother was hit by Raveena Tandon’s driver by driving into her. Afterwards, when asked to stop, the driver got out, and physically assaulted his niece and his already injured mother. Afterwards, Raveena Tandon, who had a stench of alcohol in her breath, got out of the car, and continued the assault on Muhammed’s mother until her head bled, and then proceeded to assault his niece, whose head was busted as well. According to Mohammed, the police told him to settle the dispute amongst themselves (maandvali) without cops, but Mohammed wants Arabic justice (insaaf).
The actual sequence of events between Raveena Tandon and Muhammad as per video evidence and other reports
Now let us watch the actual video.
In this video, we can see an altercation that is rife with emotions. A confused Raveena Tandon walks out of her car, distraught and trying to explain her predicament to the crowd. Meanwhile, in very well spoken Southern Bombay accent, a man is screaming “you have assaulted my mother” repeatedly, identified as the same Muhammad from before. His niece, who is recording the video, is demanding Raveena Tandon “spend her night in jail” in perfect South Bombay English as well, citing that her nose is bleeding due to Raveena Tandon and her driver’s assault.
The group is also demanding that Raveena call her driver back, whom we see leave and try to bring Raveena with him along with the crowd. Suddenly, in his South Bombay accent, Muhammad screams, “you have assaulted my mother. Maaro saali ko!”. He proceeds to repeatedly demand that Raveena be lynched by the crowd by chanting “Maaro saali ko” while pointing at Raveena. He possibly grabs her arm too, but it is unclear due to the camera shaking. We are yet to know if Raveena Tandon was assaulted by this mob or not.
Finally, several reporters confirmed by using local CCTV footage that the incident was fake. The original reporter who used the “REPORT BY MOHSIN SHAIKH” tag has also confirmed this report as completely fake, and attested it with several fellow journalists. You can find his clarification post on X (formerly twitter) here (UPDATE: Mohsin Shaikh, the original reporter of this fake incident, has deleted their original posts. It can no longer be found online at their handle @mohsinofficail and the account has gone private):
As we can see, the car did not even accidentally hit any of the women.
Also, Mohsin Shaikh is quoted saying “Actress #RaveenaTandon was in her full senses”, and this was also confirmed by DCP Raj Tilak, who said “Raveena Tandon’s driver was taking a reverse to park the car, and around that time, the other party was passing by and started shouting ‘gaadi chala rahe hai’ (they are running over us). And nothing happened, the car has not even brushed against any of them.”
Key takeaways
Let us break this incident down and ask a few questions:
- The alcohol dogwhsitle is very common against Indians. It is used by Muslims to lynch non-Muslims across the Muslim world. It has been noted by several women, and this anti-Hindu (or Hinduphobic) dog whistle becomes a pretext for lynching in many cases. Citing alcohol is the easiest way to dehumanize a kafir in the eyes of a Muslim, and this leads to several lynchings across the world.
- The gentleman Mohammed, who is clearly a beefy sized man, could clearly have saved his niece, sister and mother if they were being assaulted. He would not have stood at the sidelines. The fact that he made such an accusation despite him being the one screaming “Maaro saali ko!” in the videos is doubly shocking. It shows how fake victim cards are played by even privileged sections of certain societies to get away with atrocities against indigenous people.
- We can clearly tell from the South Bandra accent and the proficiency in English that this man is not some “subaltern” person; he is from a well educated background and has exposure to international content. Clearly, ideology matters more than education. We see Islamist voices such as Muhammad Hijab and ISIS Magazine Al-Hind who have a high budget of editors and are very proficient in English. This content is clearly trickling down to South Bandra Muslims, and unless the root ideology is not removed, things cannot change.
- The girl who is the niece of Muhammad and is recording the video, is not bleeding from the nose. Yet, she claims that she is. We see many such scams across the world take place. These scams usually run at much larger operations, and are not individual enterprises.
- Why is the police even asking them to settle out of court; ie do a maandvali? This should be thoroughly investigated from the nexus perspective and more cases should come forward.
These questions make this case more rattling, as it is proof that, no matter the economic status and social standing, no one is free from the communal tensions gripping the country today.
This incident is proof that education may not always mean being moral. While the Indic ethos has always taught us that “education is important”, we fail to realize that scientific temper, mathematics and other subjects build our logic and reasoning skills, and not language. The thing that informs our scientific temper is usually our ideology and personal and societal philosophies. While an education is important, it is equally important for people to introspect on their morality with a scientific temper.
Any religion or ideology that teaches us hate, that too in very explicit terms, should not be considered a faith at all. Rather, it should be called what it is: fascism with degrees of moderates and extremists. And fascism of any sort has no place in any civilized society.
What about Raveena Tandon?
Raveena Tandon is known for her pluralistic credentials in the Bollywood society.
Like most Sanatanis, she also likes to celebrate all festivals of all religions. As per Sanatan Dharm, all paths lead to the same truth. This truth does not have any “human” traits, such as 99 personality quirks or likes and dislikes. This truth is merely as it is, a sound of the universe, the shunya or zero of nothingness, bliss. This is the guiding principle behind Bharat’s pluralism.
When such assaults happen, we need to ensure that the dignity of the victims is protected, and those responsible are given the harshest punishments too.
We have to call a spade a spade. The strength of a society is determined by it’s honesty and ability to take action based on the truth. If certain ideologies are the root of all of this, then it becomes the responsibility of the entire society to eradicate this ideology entirely from its roots.
