By Saurabh Sharma and Rupam Jain

UDAIPUR/MUMBAI, India – Indian police made fresh arrests on Saturday over the murder of a Hindu tailor in Rajasthan, which sparked tensions between the Hindu majority and Muslim minority and a clampdown on protests and the Internet to prevent them from escalating.

Two Muslim men already under arrest for the murder, who filmed the act and posted it online, said it had been a response to the victim’s support for a politician’s derogatory remarks about the Prophet Mohammad.

The victim, Kanhaiya Lal Teli, had allegedly made a social media post supporting Nupur Sharma, a former spokesperson for Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s party, who made anti-Islam comments in May.

Three senior police officials said on Saturday that two more Muslim men based in Rajasthan were being held for planning Teli’s murder in his shop in Udaipur, a popular tourist destination.

“We have now arrested the two masterminds, and previously we had arrested two men who committed the heinous crime,” said Prafulla Kumar, a senior police official based in Udaipur.

Kumar said internet services were being gradually restored and security forces continued to be on alert.

An angry mob including some lawyers slapped and shoved the four accused in the murder case when they were presented before a trial court on Saturday.

Judges from the Supreme Court of India said on Friday Sharma must apologise to the whole nation after her remarks intensified religious fault lines in India, angered Islamic nations and triggered diplomatic strains.

Local media reported a separate incident on June 21 in which a chemist was stabbed to death in the western state Maharashtra for allegedly supporting the remarks made by Sharma on social media.

“Five persons were arrested in connection with the murder of the chemist, and a search is on to trace the prime accused,” Aarti Singh, a chief regional police official, was quoted by local press as saying.

PLEA REJECTED

Singh said the reasons behind the murder were yet to be ascertained.

At least two demonstrators were shot and killed by police in India during protests against Sharma’s comments.

In Afghanistan, the militant group Islamic State last month claimed an attack on a Sikh temple that killed at least two people and injured seven was in response to insults levelled at the Prophet Mohammad in India.

Police in New Delhi arrested journalist Mohammed Zubair, a vocal critic of the Modi government, who had helped draw attention to Sharma’s remarks through his fact-checking website Alt News and on social media.

Zubair’s bail plea was rejected on Saturday and a local court sentenced him to two weeks’ custody, a court order said.

The National Investigative Agency (NIA) – India’s top anti-terrorism agency – said it is carrying out a probe into Teli’s killing.

A senior NIA official in New Delhi said agents were questioning Muslims linked with the four accused in Udaipur to identify whether they had links with militant networks.

Muslims living about 3 kilometres from the tailor’s shop said they felt nervous and feared a social and economic boycott by powerful Hindus residing in Udaipur.

“I know what has been done is barbaric, but the community should not be held responsible for the deed of two people,” said Mohammad Farukh, a medical representative living in a Muslim-dominated area of the city.

The All India Muslim Personal Law Board called the incident “highly condemnable”, adding that it was against both Indian law and Islamic strictures.

(Editing by Jan Harvey and David Holmes)

(Corrects paragraph 15 to attribute testimony about Trump throwing a plate to Cassidy Hutchinson, not Kayleigh McEnaney; corrects name of judge in paragraph two to David Carter, not Andrew Carter)

By Luc Cohen

NEW YORK – A U.S. congressional committee probing the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the U.S. Capitol has sought to build a case that then-President Donald Trump behaved illegally when he sought to overturn his 2020 electoral defeat, but what charges might prosecutors bring against Trump and how might he defend himself?

Here are some ideas being floated now:

OBSTRUCTING AN OFFICIAL PROCEEDING

In a March 2 court filing, the committee detailed Trump’s efforts to persuade then-Vice President Mike Pence to either reject slates of electors for Joe Biden, who won the election, or delay a congressional count of those votes..

The president’s efforts likely violated a federal law making it illegal to “corruptly” obstruct any official proceeding, or attempt to do so, said David Carter, the California federal judge overseeing the case.

Cassidy Hutchinson, an aide to then-White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, said Trump dismissed concerns that some supporters gathered for his fiery speech outside the White House that day carried AR-15-style rifles, instead asking security to stop screening attendees with magnetometers so the crowd would look larger.

She testified Trump demanded to be taken to the Capitol to join supporters rioting ahead of Pence’s expected certification of the vote and tried to grab the steering wheel when his security detail insisted on returning him to the White House.

Hutchinson said the conversation was relayed to her by Tony Ornato, a senior Secret Service official who was Trump’s deputy chief of staff for operations.

Ilya Somin, professor of law at George Mason University, said the testimony could “bolster the chances of indicting and convicting Trump, especially insofar as some potential charges hinge on his motives and state of mind.”

Trump denied Hutchinson’s account in a statement posted on Truth Social, his social media app, and called her story about him grabbing the steering wheel “fake” and “fraudulent.” Trump has accused the committee of conducting a “sham investigation.”

The New York Times and NBC, citing sources in the Secret Service, said the head of Trump’s security detail, Robert Engel, and the limousine driver were prepared to testify under oath that Trump never lunged for the steering wheel.

CONSPIRACY TO DEFRAUD THE UNITED STATES

In the March 2 filing, the committee said it was likely that Trump and others conspired to defraud the United States, which criminalizes any effort by two or more people to interfere with governmental functions “by deceit, craft or trickery.”

In addition to Trump’s efforts to pressure Pence, the committee cited his attempts to convince state election officials, the public and members of Congress that the 2020 election was stolen, even though several of his allies told him there was no evidence of fraud.

According to Hutchinson’s testimony, Trump’s White House press secretary at the time, Trump was so enraged by then-Attorney General Bill Barr’s interview with the Associated Press saying there was no evidence of election fraud that Trump threw his lunch at the wall, breaking a porcelain dish and leaving ketchup dripping down the wall.

SEDITIOUS CONSPIRACY?

Prosecutors already have charged more than a dozen members of the far-right Proud Boys and Oath Keepers groups who were at the Jan. 6 riot with seditious conspiracy, a rarely used statute that makes it illegal to overthrow the U.S. government by force.

To prove seditious conspiracy, prosecutors would need to show Trump conspired with others to use force, said Barbara McQuade, a law professor at the University of Michigan and a former federal prosecutor.

“While her testimony is consistent with that theory, it does not alone establish it,” McQuade said.

OBSTRUCTION OF JUSTICE

At the end of Hutchinson’s testimony, Representative Liz Cheney, a Republican, presented possible evidence of witness tampering and obstruction of justice.

Cheney showed messages to unidentified witnesses advising them that an unidentified person would be watching their testimony closely and expecting loyalty.

If the committee has evidence that the people who sent the messages had a “tacit understanding” with Trump, prosecutors could use it to show there was a conspiracy to tamper with witnesses, said Daniel Medwed, a law professor at Northeastern University in Boston.

“They were setting the table for witness tampering and likely have other witnesses coming in to nail that down,” he said.

The fact that Cheney did not identify the sender of the messages suggests it may be “more of a shot across the bow to get the person to knock it off,” McQuade said.

TRUMP’S DEFENSE?

Trump has repeatedly denied doing anything illegal in connection with the Jan. 6 events.

If the Justice Department brings charges, prosecutors’ main challenge will be proving that Trump acted with corrupt intent, experts said.

Trump could argue he sincerely believed that he won the election and that his well-documented efforts to pressure Pence and state election officials were not meant to obstruct Congress or defraud the United States, but to protect the election’s integrity.

Hutchinson’s account could make it more difficult for Trump to assert this defense, Medwed said.

“Prior to (Tuesday’s) disclosures, the biggest hurdle to charging Trump related to mental state: to proving that he intended to obstruct an official proceeding or to agree with others to defraud the U.S. or foment rebellion,” Medwed said.

“(Tuesday’s) testimony offered powerful circumstantial evidence that it was his intent to do those things.”

DOES THIS MEAN TRUMP WILL BE CRIMINALLY CHARGED?

No. Neither Carter nor the committee can charge Trump with federal crimes. That decision must be made by the Justice Department, led by Attorney General Merrick Garland.

The department is conducting its own sprawling investigation of the Jan. 6 events, but has not signaled whether it intends to indict Trump, a decision that could have enormous political consequences as Trump weighs another run for the presidency in 2024. The department did not respond to a request for comment.

(Reporting by Luc Cohen in New York; Editing by Noeleen Walder and Howard Goller)

WASHINGTON -The congressional panel investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol attack may make a criminal referral to the Justice Department recommending that anybody who tried to influence testimony be prosecuted, Representative Liz Cheney said in an interview broadcast on Thursday.

The witness-tampering issue emerged during the Jan. 6 select committee’s sixth hearing on Tuesday, when Cheney revealed that some witnesses reported receiving veiled threats from allies of former President Donald Trump to do “the right thing.”

“It gives us a real insight into how people around the former president are operating and to the extent to which they believe that they can affect the testimony of witnesses before the committee,” Cheney, a committee vice chair and one of two Republicans on the panel of nine, told ABC News.

“It’s something we take very seriously. And it’s something that people should be aware of. It’s a very serious issue, and I would imagine the Department Justice would be very interested in and we’ll take that very seriously as well,” she said.

The panel is investigating the events surrounding the Jan. 6 storming of the U.S. seat of government last year as lawmakers convened to certify Democrat Joe Biden’s victory over Trump, a Republican, in the November 2020 election.

Evidence gathered by the committee could be crucial in the Justice Department’s criminal investigation of the riot and any plan to subvert the outcome of the election.

Jan. 6 committee member Representative Zoe Lofgren, a Democrat, echoed Cheney’s concerns, noting that Trump has raised hundreds of millions of dollars.

“Some of that money is being used to pay for lawyers for witnesses, and it’s not clear that that arrangement is one that is without coercion potential for some of those witnesses,” Lofgren said in an interview with CNN on Wednesday night.

“So let’s just say this: It’s a concern, and anyone who is trying to dissuade or tamper with witnesses should be on notice that that’s a crime and we are perfectly prepared to provide any evidence we have to the proper authorities.”

(Reporting by Doina Chiacu and Susan Heavey; Editing by Mark Porter and Alistair Bell)