The Madhya Pradesh Police on Thursday sought a written undertaking from a customer who had complained to food delivery company Zomato about being assigned a Muslim delivery executive for his food order in the “holy month” of Shravan, that he would not spread religious hatred in the society, PTI reported.
A Twitter user who identifies himself as Pandit Amit Shukla, and with the username @NaMo_SARKAAR, had tweeted on Tuesday evening that he had cancelled his order after a delivery executive called Faiyaz was assigned to deliver his food. Shukla shared the order status with a map from a locality in Jabalpur. He also shared a screenshot of the app’s chat support, through which he had requested a different delivery executive. When asked why, Shukla said: “We have Shravan and I don’t need a delivery from a Muslim fellow.”
“If in the next six months, he again makes any such tweets or commits any such act which is against basic tenets of the constitution or worthy of disturbing public peace or communal amity, then he will automatically be sent to jail,” Jabalpur Superintendent of Police Amit Singh told NDTV.
The police had earlier said they have taken suo moto notice of the Twitter post, and have decided to send a notice. Singh said nobody has lodged a complaint against Shukla yet.
Deepinder Goyal, the company’s founder in response to the man had said: “We are proud of the idea of India – and the diversity of our esteemed customers and partners. We aren’t sorry to lose any business that comes in the way of our values.” While a number of Twitter users praised Zomato’s response, it was also accused of hypocrisy by a number of right-wing supporters on the social media site.
The tweet by Shukla had received angry responses from several users. One asked if Shukla had ensured that the person who cooked his food was a Hindu, while another pointed out that Shukla’s vehicles run on “Muslim fuel”, that phone was developed by Christians, and that “the world is full of wonderful people who follow all sorts of belief systems”.
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