By IANS
Jodhpur : The Rajasthan police has filed a report in a Jodhpur court in response to a complaint filed against the depiction of Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje as a goddess in a poster.
Though police officials refused to officially divulge any details of the report, sources said Tuesday that the report states that the offence does not fall under the category of the complaint filed by the plaintiff.
"We filed our report in the court on July 2. The case is pending in the court so we cannot provide any details", a senior police official told IANS.
In April, Hemant Bohra, a Jodhpur based admirer of Raje, had designed a poster depicting the chief minister Vasundhara Raje as a Hindu goddess.
On June 19, Sheetal Kumari, the wife of former external affairs minister and senior Bharatiya Janta Party (BJP) leader Jaswant Singh, filed a complaint in a local court in Jodhpur against Bohra and BJP MLA Suryakanta Vyas for the depiction of Raje as a goddess.
In her complaint, she said action should be taken against Bohra and Vyas under Section 120 B (criminal conspiracy) and Section 298 (deliberate intentional wounding of religious feelings by word, sound, gesture or object) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC).
"All of these persons should be booked under the Indian Penal Code for deliberate intention to wound the religious feelings of persons", Sheetal Kumari stated in the petition.
Following her complaint, the Jodhpur court ordered the local police to file a report on the poster case.
The controversial poster depicted Raje as Annapurna, the goddess of harvest, showering blessings on her ministers.
Senior BJP leaders Atal Bihari Vajpayee, L.K. Advani and Rajnath Singh were shown as Lord Vishnu, Brahma and Shiva respectively, blessing Raje.
Two ministers in Raje's cabinet – Laxmi Narayan Dave and Pratap Singh Singhvi -were depicted as Kuber and Indra, the gods of wealth and rains respectively.
Bohra justified the poster by saying that Raje fully deserved a "divine status" for all that she has done for Rajasthan.
Last year, a junior minister in the Rajasthan cabinet proudly declared that he worshipped Raje as a goddess, while an admirer had earlier penned a Vasundhara Chalisa (40 religious couplets) in praise of the chief minister.