Abhijit Iyer Mitra, who apparently created bad blood by stating derogatory and unfriendly remarks against the Konark Temple in Odisha and hurt the sentiments of the ‘Odiya’ community, was arrested on Thursday, September 20, 2018. The tweets made by him on his Twitter account spoke of the sculptures of the temple which created a stir around the Odiya people, which later, Iyer cleared out confirming the tweets as jokes.
Odisha 9: my special message to you from the Konark temple expressing my utter disgust at this monumental conspiracy against the Hindu Civilisation pic.twitter.com/wJeqZPHRDk
— Abhijit Iyer-Mitra (@Iyervval) September 16, 2018
Religious enmity and partiality towards a religion are the main reasons for his sudden arrest. What amazed us is how the analyst wasn’t revealed about the details of his FIR, or who apparently was behind it. It is like watching a rift between the Britishers and Indians during the Independence era! His arrest definitely violates his ‘right to freedom of speech and expression’. Apparently, you are not bound to agree to what his views on the temple sculptures are in order to support his right to obtain free speech. The man might have questioned the exclusiveness of the temple, but his moral policies cannot be grounds of judgment at any given time. As a matter of fact, the crime is ‘humor’ and the Odisha Assembly took it on themselves to charge Iyer of religious intolerance by mere twitter updates.
Odisha 10: Jokes aside this temple is just mindblowing. The sculptures are exquisite & and it has a great sense of symmetry & gravitas pic.twitter.com/275I4D5Yw5
— Abhijit Iyer-Mitra (@Iyervval) September 16, 2018
Odisha police arrested him on charges of throwing off irresponsible remarks on the 14th of September, on social media which hurt some religious sentiments. They also added that he took pictures inside the temple and used them to derogate the ‘Odiya’ people in his social media account.
However, Mitra has been provided with a bail on the agreement of Rs. 1 lakh but has been asked to tag along with the police for an investigation in Bhubaneshwar by September 28th. If he is anyway found guilty of the charges against him, a jail term of 3 years would be his punishment.
These fruitcakes don’t know who they are dealing with. @Iyervval would probably egg them on to make sure he is jailed and stuffed inside a striped jumpsuit. Then he will tweet on the nuances of prison cuisine from inside.
STOP this nonsense and get to work. #IStandWithAbhijit pic.twitter.com/09lW4669kK
— Anand Ranganathan (@ARanganathan72) September 18, 2018
Twitter is outraged by such a decision of the court. While some are saying that the defence analyst’s arrest was a ‘stupid’ decision by the police, the others are writing to the PM Narendra Modi for justice. Some are even shocked by the fact that there wasn’t any FIR process for his sudden jail. A hashtag in support of Abhijit, #IStandWithAbhijit is floating around Twitter and is being constantly updated by the Twitter users and we hope he will find justice in a while!
