Over a dozen members of a Hindutva outfit barged into the Ghaziabad railway station on Friday chanting “Jai Shri Ram” and blackened a painting that they believed was of Mughal emperor Aurangzeb.

A railway source, however, said the defaced painting on a wall on platform 4 was of Bahadur Shah Zafar, the last Mughal emperor.

The Railway Protection Force has registered an FIR against unknown persons under sections of the Railway Act, RPF assistant security commissioner S.S. Garbyal said.

Himanshu Kumar Upadhyay, the chief PRO of Northern Railway, said: “We have come to know about the incident and are collecting CCTV footage. We will take action accordingly.”

Vipin Rajput, a member of the Hindu Raksha Dal led by Bhupendra Chaudhary alias Pinki, said: “Aurangzeb was a rapist and he broke our temples. We wouldn’t let any painting of such a cruel person in any place in India.”

Aurangzeb, a bête noire of the saffron brigade, is one of the most vilified kings in Indian history but there is no record of him ever misbehaving with women. However, he has been accused of ordering the destruction of multiple Hindu shrines.

Reminded by a reporter that damaging public property was a criminal offence, Rajput said: “It is the government’s responsibility to think before painting a criminal’s portrait on the wall of the railway station. We are only correcting their mistake.”

Paintings of kings, singers and freedom fighters have adorned the walls of Ghaziabad station for years.

“The painting on which these people sprayed black paint was of Bahadur Shah Zafar, who had rebelled against the British. It showed Zafar smoking a hookah. You will never find a picture of Aurangzeb with a hookah,” a railway officer was quoted as saying to local reporters on the condition of anonymity.

Zafar, who was also a noted Urdu poet, was exiled to Rangoon (modern-day Yangon) by the British after the Sepoy Mutiny of 1857. The British saw it as a way to weaken the symbolic leadership he had provided to the rebellion.

The members of the Hindu Raksha Dal also wrote “HRD” on the wall of the station
with red spray paint.

Pinki, founder president of the group, later released a video in which he said:
“I want to ask the government why such pictures are there on the walls of India’s buildings. We’ll not accept such things at any cost. Aurangzeb was a traitor. He
was an enemy of Sanatan Dharma and we would erase everything related to him in our country.”

Pinki was arrested last year and sent to jail with his two aides for damaging and torching a slum in Ghaziabad’s Guldhar. He had claimed that Bangladeshi nationals were living there, but the police had found the claim to be untrue. Currently, he is
out on bail.