Hindu Sena Chief Vishnu Gupta has sought Delhi Lieutenant Governor Anil Baijal’s sanction to prosecute actor and politician Kamal Haasan, for the remarks he had allegedly made associating terrorism with Hinduism while campaigning during the Lok Sabha elections in Tamil Nadu back in 2019.
According to LiveLaw, the complaint alleged that Kamal Hasaan, who had contested in the seventeenth general elections from Makkal Needhi Maiam, had addressed a huge gathering of Muslim population and said, “I am not saying this because many Muslims are here. I am saying this in front of Mahatma Gandhi’s statue. First terrorist in independent India is a Hindu, his name is Nathuram Godse.”
The complainant Vishnu Gupta has stated that these remarks were made with the mala-fide and criminal intention to ridicule the Hindu religion and to promote feelings of enmity between Hindus and Muslims.
Hasaan has been booked under sections 153A (promoting enmity between groups) and 295A (deliberate and malicious intention of outraging religious beliefs) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) at the Patiala House Court and because the plaint is at the stage before summoning of evidence, it is mandatory that prosecution sanction be granted under section 196(1) of the CrPC, reported millennium post.
According to LiveLaw, the complaint against Hasaan reads, “That the accused had while making the above said remarks deliberately and maliciously passed absolutely derogatory comments to outrage religious feelings of Hindus by associating terrorism with Hindu religion without any justification with the sole intention to promote enmity between Hindus and Muslims and outrage religious feelings and religious beliefs of Hindus along with the religious feelings of the Complainant. The accused was very well aware while making the said remarks with the intention of outraging religious feelings to insult religion and religious belief of Hindus along with the complainant that his insulting remarks will be heard and seen by citizens of India through TV and electronic media. That the provocative and outrageous remarks made by the accused are grossly offensive and deliberately intended to outrage the feelings of the complainant and Hindus living in India and in other countries.”
After Hasaan’s remarks, he was attacked with slippers while he was campaigning in Thiruparankundram assembly constituency in Tamil Nadu’s Madurai in 2019. He had also offered clarification that he didn’t intend to make communal remarks by linking the barbaric act of terrorism with religion. He had said, “….terrorism is wrong. No religion would accept violence, be it Hinduism or Islam. No religion professes violence and true Muslims present in this gathering would accept this. These Muslims will vouch that terrorism is not their way. They will swear on the holy book they believe in (Quran), that love is their way.”
Related:
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Right-wing groups can’t deny existence of Hindu terrorism: Kamal Haasan