A day after the telecast of the interview of poet Munawwar Rana with a news channel, the UP government charged him relevant sections of the Indian Penal Code for allegedly invoking hate and attempts to spread “disharmony”.
The FIR comes to post the support of Mr. Rana to the attacker who killed Professor Samuel by beheading him near Paris.
In his interview with Zee News, Munawwar Rana said if any person tries to create disrespectful cartoons of his father or mother, he’d kill him. He also gave his stand for the Hindu God and Goddesses saying that he’d do the same if similar shameful caricatures of Lord Ram or Goddess Sita were made. He went on to speak about the horrendous honor killings, which are still very prevalent in some parts of India, and debated that when those murders are not considered wrong with no punishment for the culprits, then the France murder too should be accepted.
The poet, who has received the honorable Sahitya Akademi Award for Urdu Literature, has been lodged under Section 153 A (Encouraging enmity between different groups based on religion), 295 A (Deliberate or malicious acts made to outrage religious feelings by insulting religion), 298 (Uttering, words, etc, with deliberate intent to wound the religious feelings of any person), 505(1)(b) (Punishes those who intent to cause or likely to cause fear or alarm among the public, or any section of the public whereby any person may be induced to commit an offense against the state or against the public tranquillity, 505 (2) (Whoever makes, published or circulated any statement, rumor or report, with intent to incite, or which is likely to incite, any class or community of persons to commit any offense against any other class or community) of the IPC and IT Act 66 and 67.
The FIR mentioned that his words of “justification” for the crime in France are sufficient to create “disharmony” amongst the social classes of India. According to the police, his remarks hold the potential to disrupt the peace in the country, and wrongly affect society.
Reports state the FIR was filed after Mr. Rana refused to apologize over his “objectionable” comments, calling it “harmless”.
The First Information Report was filed by Deepak Kumar Pandey on behalf of the Govt of UP. A copy of the same gives that date of the complaint as 1s Nov 2020.
The French incident in question refers to the October 16th killing of an economics professor who was beheaded in Paris. The attacker allegedly said that he executed the crime as Samuel had shown caricatures of Prophet Mohammed to his students during a discussion on free speech. The French President too was heard supporting the cartoons, although he later clarified that he was only protecting the free speech rights of the French and the cartoons weren’t affiliated to the French Government in any way.
Since then, there has been a global uproar regarding Macron’s anti-Islamic comments.
