Mumbai, Feb 11 (IANS) The latest issue of the Week newsmagazine, with the cover story titled “Mumbai’s Hitler” and a photomontage on the cover depicting Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) leader Raj Thackeray as the German dictator, has angered the party’s activists in Pune and Mumbai.
MNS activists Monday afternoon made a bonfire of the magazine’s copies at the Appa Balwant Chowk, the hub of periodical distributors in the heart of Pune. Their colleagues in Mumbai prevented the unloading of the weekly’s copies at its main distribution depot.
The cover story of the issue that hit the stands Saturday is about last week’s violence in Mumbai and other parts of Maharashtra after Thackeray repeatedly ridiculed north Indians settled in the city.
Four people claiming to be MNS activists forcibly entered the magazine’s Worli marketing office and threatened the staff with dire consequences, a senior employee of the magazine told IANS.
Following this, the police deployed security at the editorial and marketing offices of the magazine as well as the daily “Malayala Manorama”, published by the Kerala-based Malayala Manorama Group, Deputy Commissioner of Police Brijesh Singh said.
T.R. Gopaalakrishnan, editor-in-charge of the Week in Kochi, expressed surprise over the developments and said there was nothing in the article that warranted such a reaction. “We are in constant correspondence with our Mumbai office and monitoring the situation,” he added.