A day after bureaucrat Ashish Joshi complained to the Delhi Police Commissioner about a “highly incendiary” video posted by former Aam Aadmi Party leader Kapil Mishra, the Department of Telecommunications on Tuesday has suspended the official and started disciplinary proceedings against him.
Joshi, who works as the Controller of Communications Account in Dehradun, had written a letter to Delhi Police Commissioner Amulya Patnaik complaining about a “highly incendiary video” shared by the Delhi MLA on Twitter. In the poem uploaded on February 24, Mishra declared, “We will wage a war against traitors”, adding that they would be “dragged out of their homes onto the streets”.
The poem made references to journalist Barkha Dutt, activists Kavita Krishnan and Shehla Rashid, politician Navjot Singh Sidhu and actor Naseeruddin Shah.
On Tuesday, Mishra said on Twitter that “those who wanted me arrested by showing a fake letter, that person lost his job”. Mishra added, “This Ashish Joshi is suspended from his job.”
On Monday, Joshi told the Hindustan Times, “I do not know most of the people the person has named in the video. I have filed a complaint in public interest. It is shocking when a person incites violence by asking people to come forward and drag people out of their homes.”
Soon after he made the letter public, Mishra’s supporters attacked Joshi for misusing his official letterhead for a personal agenda.
Earlier in the month, Joshi had written to all telecom operators directing them to take action against customers for sending obscene messages to journalists Ravish Kumar and Abhisar Sharma. He had even mentioned phone numbers of these abusers in his letter. He sent a copy of the letter to Telecom Secretary and Director General of Police/Commissioners of all states.
In his letter, he noted that as per the Licence Agreement, the onus is also on “telecom operators to ensure that their networks are not used for obscene, malicious and objectionable transmission”.
Corrections and clarifications: A previous version of this article had stated that Ashish Joshi was a member of the Indian Administrative Service. He is with the Indian Communication Finance Service.
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