Mumbai police has ordered a probe into an allegedly inflammatory poem penned by a Female Traffic Police inspector after the August 2012 Azad Maidan riots.
“We have initiated an inquiry into the matter and necessary steps will be taken after that,” an official spokesperson told IANS.
The poem, written by inspector Sujata Patil, was published in the November issue of ‘Samvaad’, an in-house magazine of the Mumbai Police, creating a furore in the Muslim community here.
Muslim NGO Jamiat Ulema-e-Maharashtra lodged a police complaint last month demanding appropriate action, including an apology in the matter.
“Unless the Mumbai police apologise for this fracas, we shall be compelled to move the Bombay High Court for redressal of our grievances,” said lawyer Shahid Nadeem Ansari of JUeM.
In her poem, Patil had castigated the rioters who defaced the Amar Jawan Jyoti Memorial at the memorial, contending that their hands “should have been chopped off”.
Spelling more embarrassment for police, the poem also highlighted how the women police on duty then were molested, how traitors were being cultivated and how the rioters ‘dared’ touch the Amar Jawan Jyoti Memorial.
JUeM’s legal cell secretay Gulzar A. Azmi, in his complaing with the Sir J. J. Marg Police Dec 24, demanded a first information report against the policewoman poet and legal action for inciting communal passions.
On Aug 11, last year, violence broke out in a multi-organisation procession taken out to condemn alleged atrocities on Muslims in the north-eastern state of Assam and the neighbouring country Myanmar.
However, the procession went out of control and resulted in riots in which security personnel were attacked, some policewomen were molested, media-persons wee assaulted and their equipments damaged, besides large-scale damage to public and properties.
Two people lost their lives in the subsequent police firing and scores more were injured in the rioting.