Last Update: January 30, 2023, 7:29 PM IST
Samajwadi Party (SP) leader Swami Prasad Maurya is considered a prominent OBC leader in Uttar Pradesh. (File photo: PTI)
Police said that earlier on January 24, an FIR was lodged against Maurya at Hazratganj police station for his controversial remarks on Ramcharitmanas.
The Uttar Pradesh police on Monday said it has named 10 people, including Samajwadi Party leader Swami Prasad Maurya, in an FIR after an OBC group burnt copies of extracts from the Ramcharitmanas.
The All India OBC Mahasabha on Sunday protested in the Vrindavan scheme area here in solidarity with Maurya, who on January 22 claimed that the Hindu epic contained discriminatory passages against women and backward castes.
The group claimed that its members merely burnt photocopies of pages in the Ramcharitmanas allegedly containing “objectionable remarks on women and Dalits”.
The case was registered at the PGI police station here on the basis of a complaint by Satnam Singh Lavi, who alleged that the burning of ‘Ramcharitmanas’ was a threat to peace.
FIR registered under IPC sections 142 (unlawful assembly), 143, 153A (insult or assault on religion, race, place of birth, residence etc.), 295 (voluntarily causing hurt by desecration of a place of worship), 295A (knowingly and intentionally) was done. Malicious act with intent to outrage religious feelings), and 298 (uttering words with intent to outrage religious feelings), the police officials said.
Besides Maurya, those named in the FIR are Devendra Pratap Yadav, Yashpal Singh Lodhi, Satyendra Kushwaha, Mahendra Pratap Yadav, Sujit Yadav, Naresh Singh, SS Yadav, Santosh Verma, and Saleem. The FIR also mentions unidentified people, referred to as “others”.
All India OBC Mahasabha office-bearer Devendra Pratap Yadav said, ‘It is wrong to say, as reported in a section of the media, that we burnt copies of Ramcharitmanas. Shudras and women, and burned them in symbolic protest.” The Ramcharitmanas is an epic poem in the Awadhi language, based on the Ramayana and composed by the 16th-century poet Tulsidas of the Bhakti movement.
Maurya, a prominent OBC leader from Uttar Pradesh, had courted a controversy by accusing certain verses of the Ramcharitmanas of “insulting” a large section of the society on the basis of caste and demanded that these be “banned”. Maurya, who was a cabinet minister in the BJP government, had resigned and joined the Samajwadi Party ahead of the 2022 Uttar Pradesh assembly elections.
Police said that earlier on January 24, an FIR was lodged against Maurya at Hazratganj police station for his controversial remarks on Ramcharitmanas.
A case has been registered on the complaint of Shivendra Mishra, a resident of Aishbagh locality of Bazar Khala area of Lucknow.
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(This story has not been edited by News18 staff and is published from a syndicated news agency feed)