Recently, Union Minister Anurag Thakur stirred up controversy by chanting desh ke gaddaron ko… at an election rally for the upcoming Delhi elections.
Every time he chanted the slogan, the people in the crowd said – goli maaro saalon ko, which loosely translates to ‘shoot the traitors of this country’.
Clearly qualifying as hate speech, it was obviously unacceptable – but no police action was taken against Thakur.
To find out a solution for that, activist Saket Gokhale wrote to Delhi police, asking for a permission to chant the same slogan at a rally.
His idea was to put the police in dilemma, with no option but to either arrest Thakur (if they didn’t give the permission) or be answerable in front of court (if they did).
Sadly and shockingly, the lesser unfortunate thing happened. Delhi police granted him the permission to do the same.
He tweeted the letter of sanction:
Saket further clarified that he had no intention of holding a rally and just wanted to see if he would be given a permission or not.
He also said that he is taking the matter to court, and later, that he has been told the slogan will be problematic (this was after he tweeted the letter giving him the permission).