With the Supreme Court agreeing to hear the Haridwar Dharam Sansad hate speech case, the focus has again shifted on Yati Narsinghanand Saraswati, the chief priest of the Dasna Temple in Ghaziabad and mahamandaleshwar of the influential Juna Akhada.
The petitioners have said it had already been almost a month but no action had been taken by the Uttarakhand police on the FIR lodged against him and several others.
Curiously, Mr. Saraswati is facing at least 10 FIRs in Ghaziabad as well, and the U.P. police has filed chargesheet in at least two of them. More importantly, the attempt to slap the U.P. Control of Goondas Act, 1970, on Mr. Saraswati hasn’t yielded results in more than two months.
After the news came out in October 2021, Mr. Saraswati told reporters that if the Act was imposed against him, he would stage a sit-in protest at the Chief Minister’s residence in Lucknow.
This is not the first such report, officials said. A similar report was allowed to lapse a few years ago.
Admitting it was a Catch-22 situation, Pawan Kumar, Senior Superintendent of Police, Ghaziabad, said after Mr. Sararswati’s vile statements against women politicians, especially those of the BJP, went viral on social media and drew widespread condemnation, three FIRs were registered against him and a report recommending imposition of the Goondas Act was submitted by the police to the magistrate. “The magistrate had asked whether the case was covered under the Goondas Act or not. The location where the said statements were made was not clear. Now, the report is under legal scrutiny.”
Mr. Kumar added there was a provision in the Act that a complaint should come from the locality where the person resides. “In this case, there has not been any such complaint.”
D.P. Singh, the then Sub-Divisional Magistrate said he did send the report back to the police for re-examination but refused to specify the details. Meanwhile, a call has been made for Dharam Sansads in Ghaziabad and Aligarh. “He hasn’t sought permission from us yet,” said Mr Kumar.
