Ahead of the upcoming Hindu festival of Diwali, the Tamil Nadu police arrested a man on Wednesday (October 12) for asking people to buy only from Hindu shops.
As per reports, the man was identified as 32-year-old M Sakthivel. The district (Karur) coordinator of ‘Hindu Munnani’, a Hindu rights organisation, Sakthivel had distributed pamphlets asking everyone to purchase items from Hindu-owned shops.
A resident of Vengamedu Jyothidar Street, he had called upon his co-religionists to look for pictures of Hindu deities inside shops prior to purchasing any products from them.
Soft copies of the pamphlets also began doing the rounds of the internet. After taking cognisance of the matter, the Vengamedu police took Sakthivel into custody. Diwali is a Hindu festival which celebrates return of Shri Ram, Sita and Lakshman back to Ayodhya after slaying the demon king Ravan in Lanka.
He was booked under Indian Penal Code (IPC) Sections 153A (promoting enmity between different groups on grounds of religion), and 505 (public mischief). Besides the man, four of his accomplice have also been named in the case. He has been remanded to judicial custody.
When members of Hindu Munnani objected to Shakthivel’s arrest, the police arrested additional 27 members of the Hindu rights organisation.
In April this year, AIMIM (Inquilab) leader MA Qavi Abbasi also appealed to his community members to buy things only from Muslim-owned shops during the month of Ramzan.
“When they boycott us, we should also boycott them…The sleep of people gets disturbed in the morning. If they have objection to Masjid loud speakers, let there be tit for tat. They have started and we will end it. Lodge a complaint with the police and Pollution Control Board,” he had remarked.
He was also booked by the Hyderabad police but was not arrested in connection to the case.