Hardik Pandya in trouble over insensitive Babasaheb Ambedkar tweet reportedly posted by parody account

India cricketer Hardik Pandya finds himself in a soup after a special court in Jodhpur directed the police to register an FIR against him for a tweet which insults Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar.

The tweet does not appear on the cricketer’s timeline (@hardikpandya7) while a report on NDTV.com said that the tweet was posted by a parody account of the cricketer, @sirhardik3777. Even more curiously, the Twitter handle the NDTV report attributed the tweet to either has been deleted or has changed its name.

File image of India's Hardik Pandya. AP

The offensive tweet, posted on 26 December last year, read, “Which Ambedkar ??? The one who drafted a cross law and constitution or the one who spread the disease called reservation in the country.”

This led the petitioner, DR Meghwal — who claims to be a member of the Rashtriya Bhim Sena in Rajasthan’s Jalore district — to move the court against the cricketer on Tuesday, according to a report on the website of The Times of India.

The petition was filed under the SC-ST Act. Originally, Meghwal had approached a police station in Luni to file an FIR, but was sent back by the police. This was when he knocked on the court’s doors, according to a report on the website of Zee News.

“I learnt about Pandya’s comment through social media in January. It appeared quite derogatory to a figure like Ambedkar and was an attempt to spread hatred and create division in the society. By doing so, he has committed a serious crime and hurt the sentiments of my entire community,” Meghwal told The Times of India.