An arrest warrant was issued against Congress MP Shashi Tharoor on Tuesday by a Kolkata court over a remark made by him in 2018 on 'Hindu Pakistan'.
A Kolkata Metropolitan Magistrate issued the arrest warrant against Tharoor after Sumeet Chowdhary, a lawyer, filed a case against him under Section 153A/295A of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and Section 2 of the Prevention of Insults to National Honour Act, 1971, claiming that his controversial comments had hurt the religious sentiments of people and was an insult to India.
The Congress MP from Kerala's capital Thiruvananthapuram had claimed that India would become like Pakistan for Hindus if the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) won the 2019 Lok Sabha elections.
In July 2018, Tharoor, while addressing an event at Thiruvananthapuram, said that if the BJP won the 2019 LS elections, it will destroy the Indian Constitution and create a new one that will be based on Hindu Rashtra principles, where the rights of minorities will not be respected and it will lead to the creation of a "Hindu Pakistan".
"The new one will be the one which will enshrine principles of Hindu Rashtra, that will remove equality for minorities, that will create a Hindu Pakistan and that isn't what Mahatama Gandhi, Nehru, Sardar Patel, Maulana Azad and great heroes of freedom struggle fought for," he had said during the event.
"The BJP already has more than 20 states under their belt, so a Rajya Sabha majority looks near... Now if they could muster what they managed during the last Lok Sabha polls, India is done for," he had added.
However, Tharoor did not apologise for his comments even after BJP lashed out against him for the controversial remark. He defended his comment on social media claiming that the BJP and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) idea of a 'Hindu Rashtra' was the mirror image of Pakistan.
"We want to preserve India and not turn our beloved country into a Hindu version of Pakistan," he wrote on Facebook on 12 July 2018. The Court had issued a summons to him last year but he did not appear for the hearing, following which the court has issued a warrant against him.
