MUZAFFARPUR: Indian police on Friday lodged a first information report (FIR) against 49 celebrities who had written an open letter to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi against increasing cases of mob lynching.
According to a report in Indian daily The Indian Express, forty-nine eminent personalities, including filmmakers Mani Ratnam, Anurag Kashyap, Soumitra Chatterjee, and Shubha Mudgal were booked.
These celebrities had written an open letter to the Indian premier earlier this year and demanded that lynching of Muslims, Dalits and other minorities needed to be stopped immediately,
The celebrities stressed that there was “no democracy without dissent”. The open letter, addressed to Modi, also noted that Jai Shri Ram, a Hindu holy saying, had been reduced to a “provocative war cry”.
According to the news report, a local advocate Sudhir Kumar Ojha had approached Chief Judicial Magistrate Surya Kant Tiwari, seeking the registration of a case against signatories of the open letter.
“The CJM had passed the order on August 20, accepting my petition, upon the receipt of which an FIR was lodged today at the Saddar police station here,” Ojha was quoted as saying.
The petitioner said that nearly 50 signatories of the letter were named as accused in his petition in which they allegedly “tarnished the image of the country and undermined the impressive performance of Modi”.
According to the police, the FIR was lodged under various sections of the Indian Penal Code, including those relating to sedition, public nuisance, hurting religious feelings and insulting with an intent to provoke.
