A group of people forced a Dalit man to rub his nose on a platform inside a temple in Rajasthan’s Alwar district for allegedly making derogatory comments about Hindu gods on a social media post related to The Kashmir Files movie, reported Dainik Bhaskar on Thursday.
The incident took place in the Gokulpur village near the town of Behror.
The man has been identified as Rajesh Kumar Meghwal.
The movie, released on March 11, is based on the exodus of Kashmiri Pandits from the Valley in the 1990s. Prime Minister Narendra Modi and several Bharatiya Janata Party leaders have endorsed the movie.
BJP-ruled governments in eight states – Haryana, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka, Goa, Tripura, Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand – have also exempted the film from entertainment tax.
Meghwal told Dainik Bhaskar that he had commented that Kashmiri Pandits alone have not suffered atrocities but Dalits and Other Backward Classes too. He had also asked why Jai Bhim movie was not exempted from tax.
In response, some people wrote “Jai Shri Ram” and “Jai Shri Krishna” on the post. Meghwal then made the alleged derogatory remarks about the deities, which sparked anger among some people.
“To avoid hurting religious sentiments, I quickly apologised in the comments,” he told the newspaper. “I posted [the apology] again the next day.”
Anand Kumar, Behror Circle Officer, confirmed the incident to PTI: “Some of the people present there forced him to rub in nose in the temple and he followed it.”
The police have filed a first information report under provisions of the Indian Penal Code pertaining to wrongful confinement, criminal intimidation, intentional insult and voluntarily causing hurt, as also provisions of the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, The Times of India reported.
The police have arrested seven persons named Ajay Kumar Sharma, Sanjit Kumar, Hemant Sharma, Parvindra Kumar, Ramotar, Nitin Jangid and Daya Ram. Behror Deputy Superintendent of Police Anand Rao said that the police are looking for other suspects as well.
Meanwhile, Bahujan Samaj Party chief Mayawati on Wednesday called for President’s Rule in Rajasthan, citing an “unprecedented rise in atrocities on Dalits and Adivasis in the Congress government”.
She cited the alleged rape of a Dalit woman in the Didwana town of Nagaur district and the alleged murders of Dalit men in Alwar and Jodhpur. “This makes it clear that the Congress government in Rajasthan has completely failed in ensuring security, particularly for Dalits and Adivasis,” sh
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