A bookseller in India has been arrested for the heinous crime of stocking a book that allegedly contained “objectional references to Islam,” and its publisher has been interrogated by police, according to today’s Hindustan Times. How is this even possible in an allegedly free country? It happened after the chief cleric of a mosque complained to local officials about the book in Patna, the capital city of India’s Bihar state, home to a population of 82,998,509, of which over 80 percent are Hindu and 16 percent are Muslim. The outraged cleric, Maulana Kari Abdullah Bukhari, “demanded immediate action.” So Chief Minister Nitish Kumar “directed Home Secretary Afzal Amanullah, the state minority commission chairman Naushad Ahmad and Patna Senior Superintendent of Police Amit Kumar to look into the matter.” Based on the imam’s complaint, “the police arrested the bookseller and detained and interrogated the publisher of the book, Nilofer Yasin, who is the wife of the author of the book, Mohammed Yasin Ahmad.” The bookseller was jailed, the publisher interrogated. “Police are likely to arrest Ahmad” — the book’s author — “soon,” according to Patna Superintendent of Police Anwar Hussain, who said that “all of them have been charged with hurting the sentiments of the Muslim community.” The Urdu-language book in question, Islami Surah Ya Beimani Ka Panchnama, “raised eyebrows among a section of the Muslim community, particularly clerics,” because it “questioned ten tenets of Islam.” Ah, the ultimate no-no: questioning. Chillingly, the article concludes: “The police are on the lookout for Ahmad.”