Ahead of its official release in India, a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) has been filed in the Gujarat High Court, seeking a ban on Pokemon Go for hurting the religious sentiments of certain communities.
The PIL, filed by Alay Anil Dave against the developers of Pokemon Go, states that the mobile game showed Go eggs in places of worship. The PIL is likely to be heard on Wednesday by a division bench comprising Chief Justice R Subhash Reddy and Justice Vipul Pancholi.
Dave said that players enter places of worship, including temples and derasars (Jain temples), to score points. He further said that players who score points at religious places are rewarded with eggs.
"People playing the game get their points in the form of eggs which generally appear in the places of worship of different religious groups. To find eggs in temples of Hindus and Jains is blasphemous, and therefore my client has sought a ban on the game from the country," Dave's lawyer Nachiket Dave said, according to the Press Trust of India.
This the second PIL filed in India against Niantic, Inc., the San Francisco-based developer of the game. In August, a PIL raised the issue of the safety of players and others. The petition was filed to ban the game before its official launch in the country. The PIL stated that people risk their lives on roads while playing the hacked version of the game.
In India, the first accident due to Pokemon Go happened when the player's car bumped into an auto rickshaw in Mumbai. In Gujarat's Vadodara city, a museum has banned the entry of people who are seen playing the game.
Iran became the first country to ban the mobile game Pokemon Go over security reasons. Iran's High Council of Virtual Spaces, the official body monitoring online activity, banned the game because of unspecified "security concerns" last month.
