Complaint against Owaisi for refusing to say 'Bharat Mata ki jai'

A private complaint was on Wednesday filed in a Hyderabad court seeking direction to police to register a case against AIMIM leader Asaduddin Owaisi over his speech wherein he said he would not chant 'Bharat Mata ki Jai' even if a "knife is put to my throat".

Petitioner Sai Kumar Goud, a businessman, filed a complaint in the court of 20th Metropolitan Magistrate at Malkajgiri alleging that Owaisi's speech was defamatory, and sought direction to the police for registration of an FIR under IPC section 153 A (promoting enmity between different groups on ground of religion, race, place of birth, residence, language, etc.) and to further investigate the matter.

In the petition, Goud said he read the reports in newspapers with regard to Asaduddin's "defamatory" speech, which would "promote enmity between different groups".

Owaisi, while addressing a public rally in Udgir tehsil of Latur district in Maharashtra on March 13, had said he would not chant 'Bharat Mata Ki Jai'.

"I don't chant that slogan. What are you going to do, Bhagwat sahab," the Lok Sabha MP from Hyderabad had said, referring to RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat's remark that the new generation needed to be thaught to hail "Mother India".