Mumbai: The Mumbai Police Thursday called in a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) functionary from the Maharashtra unit to question him on his allegedly objectionable tweets about state Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray’s wife, Rashmi Thackeray, comparing her to former Bihar CM Rabri Devi.
Officers from the Mumbai Police’s cyber cell reached the office of Jiten Gajaria, a member of the Maharashtra BJP’s social media wing Thursday afternoon, and took him to the cyber cell’s office in Bandra Kurla Complex to record his statement, Keshav Upadhye, Maharashtra BJP’s chief spokesperson, told ThePrint.
“They (the cyber cell officers) went to Gajaria’s office to bring him in. As of Thursday evening, he was still detained at the police station. There’s no FIR right now. We don’t know who exactly the complainant is. But this is not right,” Upadhye claimed.
However, Rashmi Karandikar, deputy commissioner of police, cyber cell, told ThePrint, “He (Gajaria) has not been detained. It’s just a part of the process. A group of ladies had complained. We are still completing the process.”
The ‘objectionable’ tweets
Gajaria had on Tuesday tweeted a photo of Rashmi Thackeray with a caption that said ‘Marathi Rabri Devi.’
Marathi Rabri Devi pic.twitter.com/P1rnO0SC9o
— Jiten Gajaria (@jitengajaria) January 4, 2022
The same day, Gajaria also posted a photograph of CM Thackeray and Deputy CM Ajit Pawar in conversation with a caption that said, “If Rashmi runs the government, then am I the deputy CM only to urinate?” The tweet has now been deleted.
The tweet was a veiled reference to a controversial statement that Ajit Pawar had made in 2013. Addressing a public meeting, Pawar had ridiculed the severe water shortage in the state, asking farmers if he should urinate in dams to fill them up.
Gajaria’s tweets came after Abdul Sattar, a Shiv Sena minister of state in the Maharashtra government, told reporters that if CM Thackeray, who is recovering from a major cervical spine surgery, decided to appoint Rashmi Thackeray in his place as the first woman CM of Maharashtra, then all Shiv Sena members would welcome the decision.
He also praised Rashmi Thackeray for having a major role in the party and for running its mouthpiece, Saamana, efficiently. Rashmi Thackeray was appointed as the newspaper’s editor-in-chief after Uddhav Thackeray assumed the CM’s role in November 2019.
Also read: Why Uddhav’s son Tejas — ‘Viv Richards of family, finder of wild secrets’ — is creating a buzz
‘BJP’s culture has no respect for women’
Speaking to ThePrint, Shiv Sena MLC Manisha Kayande said her party would demand that Gajaria receive the strongest punishment possible and that his Twitter account be suspended.
“The BJP’s culture is such, they talk about themselves having roots in the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, but they have no respect for the honour of women. The BJP’s IT cell is an industry that runs on salaries, so it is not the Bharatiya Janata Party, it is Bharatiya Trollers’ Party. They call themselves a ‘party with a difference’, but all they do is troll and malign opponents,” Kayande said.
“Rashmi Thackeray has never been directly political. She doesn’t involve herself in social media mudslinging. She only focusses on running Saamana, and yet the BJP has viciously targeted her. It is all part of a well-planned attack on the Thackeray family,” she added.
Kayande said she does not know whether the complaints to the cyber cell were from Shiv Sena members. However, she said, she planned to meet senior IPS officers of the Mumbai Police Thursday evening as part of a party delegation to demand strict action against Gajaria.
ThePrint had earlier reported that the Shiv Sena’s legal cell had filed at least 10 FIRs against social media users for their allegedly objectionable comments against CM Thackeray, his son Aaditya Thackeray, who is also a Maharashtra cabinet minister, and the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government in the state.
(Edited by Rohan Manoj)
Also read: ‘Sure you don’t like it’ — BJP flags ‘derogatory’ Saamana articles to editor Rashmi Thackeray