Screengrab from TOI video on Instagram
Bhopal: Hindutva forces punished a dhaba owner in Madhya Pradesh’s Chhatarpur district for serving meat-based dishes, particularly biriyani, when his dhaba is named after a Hindu god. The owner of the “Krishna Dhabha Biriyani Express” was forced to do sit-ups for serving non-vegetarian food in the district's Maharajapur Police Station area, Times of India reported.
A video of the incident went viral on social media.
According to reports, three people compelled the dhaba owner, Gyanchand Chaurarisa, to perform sit-ups and apologise. The video shows the Hindutva activists threatening the owner to remove the name board of the eatery.
Later, the Hindutva organisation Hindu Jodo Sangathan justified the Hindutva group's confrontation with the dhaba owner. Sanju Mishra, a member of the organisation, alleged that the dhaba owner, Chaurasia, has been selling non-vegetarian food under the name of the Hindu god for two years, and they have asked him twice to remove the board, but he hasn’t listened.
Mishra even went on to state that people say his group only acts against Muslims, but now his group has chosen to act against “one of their own”, TOI reported.
Police have registered a case against three persons. They said that the incident occurred on Tuesday and an investigation into the case is underway.
Earlier this week, in the matter of directives issued by BJP-ruled states Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand, demanding restaurants and dhabas to display the owner’s names in the route of Kanwar Yatra, Delhi University professor Apoorvanand and rights defender Aakar Patel have filed a petition in the Supreme Court seeking a stay, The Wire reported.
As per the state government’s directive, the shop owners have to display QR codes that reveal their names, and the petition contended that this amounts to discriminatory profiling, which was already stayed by the top court.