The Delhi Police have registered 100 first information reports and arrested six persons after posters seeking the ouster of Prime Minister Narendra Modi were found in several areas of the national capital, an official told PTI on Wednesday.
The posters said: “Modi hatao, desh bachao [Save the country by ousting Modi].”
Special Commissioner of Police (Law and Order of Northern Zone) Dependra Pathak confirmed that 100 FIRs have been filed under sections of the Prevention of Defacement of Public Property Act and Press and Registration of Books Act. Owners of two printing press are among those arrested.
Pathak told The Indian Express that the police had intercepted a van in IP Estate when it was coming from the Aam Aadmi Party headquarters at Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Marg and arrested a man.
“The arrested man disclosed that he was asked by his employer to deliver the posters at AAP’s headquarters, and that he had made a delivery a day earlier as well,” he added.
The police took down 2,000 posters and seized 2,000 more posters from the vehicle. The van was also impounded, officials told PTI.
Initially reports said that 44 cases have been filed. Of these, twenty first information reports have been registered in the Northwest district, six in North and five in West, apart from three each in Shahdara and Dwarka, two each in Central, Northeast and East, and one in Southeast Delhi.
The Aam Aadmi Party on Wednesday said that the cases highlight the dictatorship of the Modi government.
“What is so objectionable in this poster that Modi ji filed 100 FIRs,” AAP tweeted. “PM Modi, you probably do not know but India is a democratic country. So scared of one poster. Why?”
The crackdown comes two years after the Delhi Police in 2021 had arrested several persons for posters critical of Modi’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic.
The posters had questioned the prime minister’s move to export vaccines during India’s devastating second wave of Covid-19.
The posters had asked, “Modi ji, why did you send our children’s vaccines aboard?”
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