A defamation case has been registered at Pune against Gujarat MLA Jignesh Mevani for allegedly tweeting a morphed photo of columnist Shefali Vaidya, the Police said on Tuesday. The controversial politician had tweeted a morphed photo of Vaidya with Yogi Adityanath and Sri Sri Ravi Shankar drawing a parallel with a still from the Paresh Rawal-Akshay Kumar starring movie “Oh My God!”
Mevani had tweeted, “Seeing this (picture) I really want to say Oh My God! It has become too filmy. Did art predict real life? Like a film, these three are also big actors.” Mevani had called them ‘Dramebaaz’ as well. However, he issued an apology over the tweet soon after. He said, “I am told that this is a photoshopped image. Apologies for posting it without verification. Deleting my previous tweet now and will be careful in future. We all should be careful about this and whenever we get to know that it is fabricated, we should delete it.”
The Paud police in Pune registered the complaint under Section 500 of the IPC and also under Section 66 (C) of the Information Technology Act 2000. Shefali Vaidya told One India, Jignesh Mevani is no ordinary person. He is an elected MLA with links to the Congress. He cannot use his position and power to abuse, humiliate and bully a private citizen like me just because I am a woman and he dislikes my views. The morphed picture he tweeted was sexist and defamatory and caused a lot of trauma to my kids. I was forced to file a police complaint. I have faith in the law of the land.”
Jignesh Mevani has found himself in a spot of bother previously as well. Earlier in April, he had urged people to disrupt Prime Minister Modi’s rally in Karnataka by throwing chairs. A case was also registered against him for his remarks. More recently, in May, the Gujarat MLA had spread misinformation on Twitter about the death of a labourer. Republic had also aired a video where he could be seen fomenting caste-based violence prior to the riots at Bhima Koregaon. In another incidence, a video had emerged where he could be seen abusing the Police in Gujarat.
