I read with interest the article “Crime has no race, caste or religion” (March 29) by Bikram Vohra. I appreciate the writer for coming up with this write-up. In today’s world, we need to promote this mentality. It is very important to treat a crime and criminal with an iron fist and without seeing such people and their actions through the prism of ideologies. Such an approach will help maintain peace and harmony in the entire world.

Terrorism, for example, should only be treated as a crime against humanity. Unfortunately, there are many western scholars, politicians and analysts who try to link this menace to Islam. Due to inflammatory statements and reports, extremists in this part of the world are having a field day. Hate speech only helps extremists achieve their goals. The entire Muslim world is a victim of terrorism and none of the terrorist organizations enjoy popular support among Muslims. As a matter of fact, prominent Muslim scholars and common Muslims have time and again voiced their anger over the actions of terrorist organizations and condemned these outfits and its actions as un-Islamic. What else are we supposed to do?

In the case of India, promoting a mentality that does not see things through the prism of religion, caste and race becomes even more important.

India is a culturally diverse country. Those people who try to give every incident a religious color are not at all serving India. I blame the Indian media for not acting in a responsible manner. As the writer has correctly pointed out a criminal’s religious affiliation should not make any difference to the way his/her crime is reported. A killer is a killer and a rapist is a rapist. I strongly believe that we should not even report a criminal’s faith while reporting a case.