Mumbai Gaurav Sarjerao, a cartoonist from Marmik, a Marathi periodical started by late Shiv Sena supremo Balasaheb Thackeray, has filed a complaint with the Byculla police after being on the receiving end of a sustained online hate campaign from Shiv Pratishthan leader Sambhaji Bhide’s followers.
Bhide was recently in the news after he refused to speak to a female journalist because she wasn’t wearing a “bindi.” His stand attracted widespread outrage from various sections of the society and Sarjerao, on November 3, published a caricature of a man resembling Bhide, with a thick bunch of worms in place of the moustache.
The caption along with the caricature, which was posted on Instagram and Twitter, read, “For the last hundreds of years, the Manuwadi germs in some people’s brains have not stopped squirming. Such people keep interfering with other people’s lives in the name of religion. Such thoughts should always be condemned and uprooted.”
Sarjerao said that the caricature received a lot of traction on social media and last week, he started observing a concerted hate campaign against him.
“I had not named Bhide or anyone else when I published the caricature. Over the last week, I saw several posts on Instagram where people were being urged to report my account as well as to send me messages. When I checked the profiles which were putting up these posts, some of them were boys as young as 15 and 16 years old. Soon, I started receiving threats in my Direct Messages (DMs),” Sarjerao told HT.
{{/usCountry}}“I had not named Bhide or anyone else when I published the caricature. Over the last week, I saw several posts on Instagram where people were being urged to report my account as well as to send me messages. When I checked the profiles which were putting up these posts, some of them were boys as young as 15 and 16 years old. Soon, I started receiving threats in my Direct Messages (DMs),” Sarjerao told HT.
{{/usCountry}}While initially choosing to ignore the threats, Sarjerao decided to file a formal complaint after he was advised to do so by some police officials. Accordingly, he visited the Byculla police station on Tuesday and a non-cognisable complaint (NC) was registered. The police have booked two accused for intentional insult to provoke breach of peace and criminal intimidation under the Indian Penal Code.
“We are obtaining details of the accounts that were targeting Sarjerao and further inquiries into the matter are underway,” said an officer with the Byculla police.
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