The Bengaluru Police on Saturday filed a case against actor Chetan Kumar days after he said that the Bhoota Kola practice depicted in the Kannada film Kantara was not a part of Hindu traditions, The Indian Express reported.
Kumar had on Wednesday said that Bhoota Kola was “practiced by Adivasis” and that there was “no Brahminism” in it. “The worship of forests and the environment had been practised by Adivasis even before the Hindu religion came into existence in India,” he said.
Kumar had also said that the imposition of Hindi and Hindutva was unacceptable.
The case against the actor was filed on the basis of a complaint by Shiv Kumar, the Bengaluru (north) convenor of the Hindutva organisation Bajrang Dal. Another Hindutva organisation, the Hindu Jagarana Vedike, has also filed a complaint against the actor in the Udupi city.
The police filed the first information report under Section 505(2) of the Indian Penal Code that deals with creating or promoting enmity between classes.
Kumar had made the remark in response to a statement by the film’s director Rishab Shetty that the Bhoota Kola tradition was a part of Hindu culture. Shetty had said that a spirit depicted in the film that takes the form of a wild boar is a part of Hindu tradition.
This was the second case filed against Kumar this year. On February 23. he was arrested by the Bengaluru Police for a tweet in which he had criticised a judge who was part of the Karnataka High Court bench that heard a group of petitions challenging the state’s ban on hijabs in educational institutions.
Kumar had said that Justice Krishna Dixit had earlier granted bail to a man accused of rape after questioning how the woman could have fallen asleep after the alleged sexual assault, according to The News Minute. The judge had said in the order that such conduct was “unbecoming of an Indian woman; that is not the way our women react when they are ravished”.
Kumar was booked under Section 505 (2) of the Indian Penal Code in this case as well. He got bail on February 25.
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