The Cyber Cell of the Mumbai Police on Friday booked stand-up comedian and All India Bachod (AIB) founder Tanmay Bhat for posting an “offensive” meme about Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
The AIB’s meme posted on its website and the twitter showed an image of a Modi’s look-alike a railway station, along with a photo of the PM with a Snapchat dog filter.
The meme, aimed at taking a dig at Modi for his innumerable foreign tours, elicited strong reactions on the social media, prompting AIB to delete the offensive posting.
“We have registered the FIR at the Cyper Police Station in this regard after due legal consultations. Further details will be communicated later,” Mumbai Police spokesperson DCP Rashmi Karandikar said.
The FIR was lodged against Bhat and AIB at the cyber police station at Bandra-Kurla Complex, under section 500 (defamation) of IPC and 67 Information Technology Act, 2000 (Punishment for publishing or transmitting obscene material in electronic form) taken at cyber police station at Bandra-Kurla Complex. The IT Act prescribes a jail term extending up to three years and with fine which may extend to Rs 5 lakh. Defending the meme posted on the AIB website and on Twitter, Bhat tweeted, “Will continue making jokes. And deleting if necessary. And making jokes again. And apologising if necessary. Don’t care what you think”.
One Reetesh Maheshwari, a twitter user, wrote to the Mumbai police handle, calling the meme an "unbearable prank" and asked for a legal action against this. The Mumbai Police took immediate cognizance of the meme and initiated action. “Thank you for bringing this to our notice. We are forwarding this to the cyber police station,” the Mumbai Police tweeted.
This is not the first time that Bhat has found himself in the eye of a controversy. In May last year, Bhat had run into rough weather after he uploaded a video mocking legendary cricketer Sachin Tendulkar and singer lata Mangeshkar. So much so that the police had asked the U-Tube”, “Facebook” and “Google” to block the controversial video'Sachin vs lata Civil War' from circulation.
The vociferous protests had that time around seen the cine wing of the Raj Thackeray-led MNS lodge a complaint against Bhat with the Shivaji Park police, the Shiv Sena shoot off letter to CM Devendra Fadnavis demanding the stand-up comedian’s arrest, the BJP request the Mumbai Police Commissioner Datta Padsalgikar seeking registration of a case against the AIB co-founder and NCP’s women activists burn Bhat’s effigy.
Earlier, an FIR had been registered against 14 persons, including Bhat, filmmaker Karan Johar, actors Ranvir Singh and Arjun Kapoor for allegedly putting up a pre-scripted “vulgar and obscene” public performance at the AIB roast show held at held at NSCI’s Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel indoor stadium on January 20, 2015.
Apart from Bhat, Johar, Ranvir, Arjun, Deepika Padukone and Alia Bhatt, the others against whom the FIR was registered by the Tardeo police would included: Jayantilal Shah, president of NSCI, Ravinder Aggarwal, secretary general of NSCI, organisers of AIB Roast programme, film critic Rajeev Masand, and popular stand up comedians like Rohan Joshi, Gursimran Khamba, Ashish Shakya, and Aditi Mittal.
While 4,000-odd people had witnessed live performance at the show, the organisers later uploaded the edited version of the show on the YouTube, which attracted more than three million hits after the show went viral on the internet and sparked massive protests among the people.