Cannot lodge FIR against Raj Thackeray, say Delhi Police

The Delhi police on Saturday told a city court that it was facing several legal hurdles in lodging a first information report (FIR) against Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) president Raj Thackeray for allegedly branding Bihar migrants in Mumbai as infiltrators.

The Delhi police on Saturday told a city court that it was facing several legal hurdles in lodging a first information report (FIR) against Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) president Raj Thackeray for allegedly branding Bihar migrants in Mumbai as infiltrators.

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The police told metropolitan magistrate Neeraj Gaur that Thackeray’s comments had not been made in the capital and that the newspapers that had carried them were not printed there either.

Earlier, advocate Prem Shankar Sharma had lodged a complaint saying Thackeray's remarks, which also included threats to throw Bihar natives out of Maharashtra, were provocative and anti-national. Sharma asked for an FIR to be lodged against the MNS chief. The investigating officer, who had filed an action-taken report, said the police were ready and willing to abide by the court's direction on the issue.

The police also told the court the complainant had claimed to have read Thackeray’s alleged remarks in several English and Hindi dailies but “neither the office nor the printing press of the newspapers, in which the news was published due to which the complainant has been hurt, is situated in the area of the police station.”

The police also claimed that the “news causing hurt to the complainant has been printed in Noida and Sahibabad, Uttar Pradesh. Hence, the complaint has been forwarded to SSP Ghaziabad for necessary action at their end”.