By TwoCircles.net Staff Reporter,
Pune : Well-known Marathi author Dr. Shripal Sabnis has lodged a complaint with the Maharashtra Police, alleging that he received death threats for his controversial remarks made against Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Sabnis, who is also the President of the upcoming 89th Akhil Bharatiya Marathi Sahitya Sammelan 2016, filed a FIR at the Umaraga police station in Osmanabad district against two people from right-wing outfits for allegedly giving him death threats over the phone after he received much flak from local Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) members for a speech this week in which he condemned Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
“The duo spoke to me in a very indecent manner and threatened me for speaking against Modi. They told me, ‘Have you become bigger than Modi?’ and also warned me that I should apologise or face consequences,” Sabnis told reporters.
He said he received calls from two people at 11.30 in the morning of Saturday, identified as Hiraman Gavali and Anup Agrawal, both residents of Dhule. He then registered a case at Umarga police station.
In a speech at college of Akurdi Pimpri-Chinchwad on Thursday, Sabnis had lambasted Modi as a man forever “smeared with the taint of the 2002 Gujarat riots” and a Prime Minister that he would not endorse.
“I do not accept Modi under whose tenure Gujarat carnage happened…but I have no problem with this Modi who talks of Buddha and Gandhi and goes to Pakistan for establishing peace despite threats to his life,” he had said.
These comments from Sabnis triggered protests from BJP which has threatened to stop him from descending on the dias of the Marathi literary meet which is going to take place in Pimpri-Chinchwad from January 15.
Pimpri-Chinchwad BJP unit has asked him to resign over his anti-Modi comments whereas the programme at Latur, where Sabnis was one of the chief guests, was disrupted by BJP workers on Saturday evening.
Amar Sable, BJP’s Rajya Sabha MP from Pimpri- Chinchwad termed the “ranting” of Sabnis regarding the PM as “intolerant” and warned that unless and until Sabnis apologises for his remarks, the BJP unit will not allow him to enter the literary meet scheduled later this month at Pimpri.
However, Sabnis is defiant while asserting that he “will not apologise even if BJP members hang him.”
“The Indian constitution has given me freedom of speech and nobody has the right to take away that right from me. I will speak against what is wrong and speak in favour of what is right. I have constitutional right for doing this,” he said.