Pune-based activist who filed PIL in HC against Owaisi gets threat letter

Mumbai: Pune-based activist Hemant Patil has received a threat letter asking him to withdraw his PIL in Bombay High Court against AIMIM leader Asaduddin Owaisi and party MLA in Maharashtra Waris Pathan for refusing to chant ‘Bharat Mata Ki Jai’. “I have filed a complaint at Vishrantwadi police station in Pune under section 507 IPC (criminal intimidation) against an unknown person and will take up the matter with the High Court when the public interest litigation comes up for hearing,” Patil told PTI. [caption id=“attachment_2706172” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  A file photo of Asaduddin Owaisi. AFP[/caption] Senior Police Inspector P N Supekar confirmed that a non-cognisable complaint has been filed and investigations are underway. The letter, written in Marathi language on a postcard by an unidentified person, asked Patil to take back the petition he had filed in high court against Owaisi. It also says that Owaisi is “like God to Muslims and anything against him would not be tolerated”. The letter further said, “Hemant Patil, we will kill you, if you pursue the matter in the high court.” The PIL had urged the court to order an inquiry into speeches made by Owaisi and Pathan recently in which they had allegedly dishonoured the country by making some remarks. The petition had contended that the speeches made by them amounted to spreading communal disharmony and hurting national integrity and unity of the country. Such remarks are anti-national and have the tendency to break the social fabric of the society and divide the people on the basis of religion and parochial issues, said Patil, who heads the NGO Bharat against Corruption. The petition, which is slated to come up for hearing in due course, also demanded a ban on All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM), saying that remarks made by the duo amounted to violation of Representation of the People’s Act and were against the basic principles of Constitution. The PIL further sought a direction to the Maharashtra government, Director General of Police and Secretary of Home department to call for the records in respect of speeches delivered by Owaisi at a public rally in Latur and Pathan’s utterances in the state Legislative Assembly that they would not say ‘Bharat Mata Ki Jai’. The petition had alleged that Owaisi and his partymen were continuously engaged in delivering speeches which spread communalism and endanger national integration.