Mumbai: The Bombay High Court on Monday sought reply from the Mumbai police on the petitions filed by Samajwadi Party MLA Abu Azmi seeking the dismissal of two FIRs registered against him for the Aurangzeb remark.
Following the remarks, he was suspended from the Maharashtra Vidhan Sabha Assembly budget session in March this year. A bench of Justices Ajey Gadkari and Rajesh Patil sought response from police and kept the pleas for hearing after four weeks.
Azmi’s advocate Mubin Solkar said that the MLA had never made any derogatory remarks against the Maratha king or any other Hindu ruler. He alleged that his statements had been quoted out of context by his political opponents to draw political mileage.
Marine Drive police registered a two FIRs against Azmi, who represents Mankhurd Shivaji Nagar assembly constituency.
Seeking quashing of the FIRs, his plea read: “The FIR does not disclose the basic ingredients of the alleged offences; there is no whisper in the FIR that the Applicant made the statements with the malicious intent of hurting the religious sentiments of any community. The FIR is politically motivated, and is an abuse of the process of law.”
On March 3, in an interview to the media, called Aurangzeb a “good administrator”, adding that during his reign, India’s borders reached Afghanistan and Burma. Azmi further said that if Aurangzeb had destroyed temples, he had also destroyed mosques. The comments were made in the context of the release of the film Chhava which depicted the conflict between Chhatrapati Sambhaji Maharaj and Aurangzeb.
His comments disrupted the Asseinle sessions when BJP leader and Higher Education Minister Chandrakant Patil moved a resolution seeking his suspension from the Assembly. FIRs were initially registered at Thane, which were then transferred to Marine Drive.
Azmi was granted pre-arrest bail, in both the cases, by the session’s court. While rapping the police for registering the cases before going through Azmi’s speech, the session’s court also asked rh MLA to exercise restraint while giving interviews.
