Haridwar hate speech: Yati Narsinghanand and another seer’s names added to the FIR
With this, five persons have now been booked for making provocative speeches against Muslims at an event earlier this month.
The Uttarakhand Police on Saturday added the names of two more persons in the first information report registered in connection to the provocative speeches made against Muslims at a religious conclave in Haridwar city earlier this month, ANI reported.
Two seers, Yati Narsinghanand Giri and Sagar Sindhu Maharaj, have been booked under Section 295A (deliberate and malicious acts intended to outrage religious feelings), Uttarakhand Director General of Police Ashok Kumar said. Their names were added to the FIR on the basis of video clips of the event that went viral on social media, the police officer said.
With this, five people have now been booked for making provocative speeches at the “Dharm Sansad” event held in Haridwar between December 17 and December 19. The speakers at the event asked Hindus to buy weapons for genocide against Muslims.
The initial FIR filed on December 23 had named just one person – former Shia Waqf Board chief Jitendra Narayan Tyagi, who recently converted to Hinduism and changed his name from Wasim Rizvi.
On December 26, the Uttarakhand Police added the names of Sadhvi Annapurna, also known as Pooja Shakun Pandey, and priest Dharamdas Maharaj, in the FIR. Annapurna is the general secretary of Hindutva organisation Hindu Mahasabha.
Yati Narsinghanand Giri, also known as Yati Nargsinghanand Saraswati, has made several extremist comments in the past as well. At the Haridwar event, he had called upon Hindus to pick up weapons, asserting that “economic boycott” of Muslims will not work.
“No community can survive without picking up weapons...And swords won’t work, they look good only on stages,” Narsinghanand had said at the event. “You need to update your weapons...More and more offsprings and better weapons, only they can protect you.”
Over the past couple of weeks, multiple incidents of Hindutva supremacists making hateful speeches have emerged. Over the same weekend when the Haridwar event took place, Hindutva group Hindu Yuva Vahini organised an event in Delhi where people took oath to “die for and kill” to make India a Hindu nation.
On Thursday, Chhattisgarh Police arrested Hindu religious leader Kalicharan Maharaj after he insulted Mahatma Gandhi and praised his assassin Nathuram Godse at an event held in Raipur earlier this month. The Pune Police too, have booked Kalicharan and four others for allegedly making inflammatory speeches against Muslims and Christians at an event in the city on December 19.