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Media reports state that the Delhi Police has said that it has registered a case against some people who are allegedly spreading messages of hate, inciting various groups and creating situations which are harmful for the maintenance of public tranquillity.
Among those named in the FIR, registered by the Intelligence Fusion and Strategic Operation (IFSO) unit of the Special Cell, are Naveen Kumar Jindal, Shadab Chauhan, Saba Naqvi, Maulana Mufti Nadeem, Abdur Rehman and Gulzar Ansari, the police said. The FIR is against several individuals cutting across religions, Deputy Commissioner of Police (IFSO) KPS Malhotra said.
While this move of the Delhi police to create an equivalence around the comments of some persons vis a vis the obviously inciteful remarks of the BJP spokesperson, Sharma has been condemned, the police has said that it unit will investigate the roles of various social media entities in promoting false and wrong information with an intention to create unrest on the cyber space and that have ramifications on the physical space thereby compromising with the social fabric of the country.
The fact that senior journalist has been drawn into this criminal complaint has been criticised on social media.
“It’s beyond ridiculous that Nupur Sharma and Saba Naqvi have been booked by the Delhi Police for the same offence in the same FIR. I have seen what Saba Naqvi posted and it does not, in my understanding, insult or demean anything held sacred. It merely gestures, in an intelligent and pointedly satirical manner, to the opportunist and ridiculous propensity to claim any and every thing as an object that some might hold as sacred, merely because of a similarity in shape. Geometrically speaking, every Shiv-Ling is cylindrical. But not every cylinder is a Shiv-Ling.
“That is exactly the point that needs to be made at a time like this. It is a sign of the deviousness and desperation of this regime that instead of being serious about prosecuting actual hate speech, it should waste its time on drawing false equivalences between hate speech and satirical speech in order to silence and persecute it’s critics, especially if they happen to bear Muslim sounding names.
“At the risk of repetition, let me clarify, again – that I believe that Nupur Sharma’s statements require relentless criticising, naming and shaming – not legal action. In my opinion, there should be no FIR against her as well. However, the utterances of Yati Narsinghanand and Dr. Pooja Shakun Pandey, are prima facie hate speech. They should be prosecuted.
“The fact that Saba Naqvi is placed on the same plane as an idiot like Nupur Sharma on the one hand, and hate speech mongers like Narsinghanand and Pooja Shakun Pandey on the other, is simply preposterous and deserves the harshest condemnation.”
#i_stand_with_sabanaqvi”
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