Uttar Pradesh minister and Bharatiya Janata Party leader Kapil Dev Aggarwal on Thursday refused to meet the relatives of two Muslim men killed during last week’s protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act in Bijnor district, Hindustan Times reported. However, the minister visited Om Raj Saini, who was injured in the violence that took place in the district’s Nehtaur area.

Aggarwal described the Muslim men and their families as “vandals”, PTI reported. “Why should I go to vandals’ place?” he asked. “How can those who are involved in vandalism and put the entire country and state in arson be social?”

The minister also denied that he had discriminated on religious grounds. “Listen to me, those who are doing vandalism and want to inflame passions, how are they part of society?” he asked. “This is not about Hindu-Muslim.”

The police have claimed that 20-year-old Mohammad Suleman was shot by a constable in “self-defence”. Suleman studied in Noida but was in Nehtaur because he had fever. His family claimed he was picked up by the police while he was returning from a mosque. His sisters told Scroll.in that he was a hard-working student who used to stay up all night to prepare for the Civil Services Exam. The police took him into a lane and shot him, the family alleged. The other victim was identified as Anas, also 20 years old.

Congress General Secretary Priyanka Gandhi had met the two families on Sunday. “The Congress will fight for the families and ensure that justice is done to them,” she said. Gandhi also demanded a judicial inquiry into their deaths.

The Citizenship Amendment Act grants citizenship to undocumented non-Muslim migrants from six minority religious groups from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan, provided they have lived in India for six years. The cut-off date is December 31, 2014. The amended Act, which was passed by Parliament on December 11, has been decried as anti-Muslim. As many as 18 people died in Uttar Pradesh during the demonstrations. The nationwide toll is 25.

On Thursday, two days after it came to light that Uttar Pradesh’s Rampur district administration has asked 28 people to explain why they should not pay for damage worth Rs 14.86 lakh caused during anti-Citizenship Act protests, reports emerged that six other districts had sent similar notices to people.

According to senior officials, 295 people in the districts of Lucknow, Kanpur, Meerut, Muzaffarnagar, Sambhal, Rampur, Bijnor and Bulandshahr have received notices in connection with property damage worth at least Rs 1.9 crore.

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