India / Man booked for calling Aaditya Thackeray 'baby penguin'

Nagpur: A day after a Nagpur resident was booked for calling Maharashtra Tourism Minister Aaditya Thackeray ‘baby penguin’, the hashtag #BabyPenguin is number three on the world Twitter trends.

It has been used in almost 15,000 tweets and has been trending since Thursday morning.

Sumeet Thakkar was booked Wednesday after he posted a series of derogatory tweets against Aaditya, Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray and Energy Minister Nitin Raut. In one such tweet, he called Uddhav ‘modern-day Aurangzeb’ and Aaditya ‘baby penguin’ on 1 July.

Meet the Muhammad Azam Shah of Maharashtra aka baby Penguin aka @AUThackeray son of Modern day Aurangzeb @OfficeofUT who insults Hindu Dharma in Pandharpur by leaving Pooja Darshana half this same man have faith and time for Dargha Visit & for date with @DishPatani #Shame pic.twitter.com/E99ufmwL9y

— Sameet Thakkar (@thakkar_sameet) July 1, 2020

Several people on Twitter then joined the bandwagon, mocking Aaditya with the comparison.

BJP supporter and author Shefali Vaidya also took aim at the Shiv Sena minister.

Thakkar has more than 43,000 followers on the micro-blogging site, and Prime Minister Narendra Modi is one of them.

After the complaint, he once again called the Shiv Sena duo derogatory names and said he won’t be intimidated by them.

Charges against Thakkar

Thakkar has been booked under Sections 292 (obscene acts or words in public), 500 (defamation) of the Indian Penal Code and Section 67 (publishing or transmitting obscene material in electronic form) of the Information Technology Act.

After the charges were filed, Thakkar has been regularly posting on Twitter, reiterating that he will not be intimidated by the legal action taken against him.

Thakkar also referred to earlier instances of name-calling among politicians and how no charges were drawn against them. He noted that Congress leader Sanjay Nirupam had once called PM Modi ‘Aurangzeb’.

In another instance, he noted how CM Uddhav had called Modi, Home Minister Amit Shah and former CM Devendra Fadnavis members of “Afzal khan army”.

Incidentally, this is not the first time Aaditya has been associated with a penguin. Last year, before the Maha Vikas Aghadi alliance, National Congress Party had posted a cartoon criticising the Shiv Sena’s handling of the Maharashtra drought. The image had a penguin perched on Aaditya’s shoulder.