A court in India’s Uttar Pradesh on Saturday directed the police to register a case against social activist Anna Hazare for allegedly showing disrespect to the national flag during his visit there on July 29, Times of India (TOI) has reported.
Chief judicial magistrate Narendra Bahadur Prasad directed the Line Bazar police to register the case and probe the matter, according to the Indian news website.
The court’s direction came on a petition filed by a local lawyer Himanshu Srivastava.
In his complaint, Srivastava alleged that Hazare had visited the college in the area to address a meeting during his ‘Jantatra Yatra’ on a vehicle, on which a full size India’s tricolour (green, white and orange) was pasted. The meeting went on till 8pm which apparently amounted to “showing disrespect to the flag,” TOI website read.
According to the rules, the national tricolour should be hoisted from sunrise to sunset and not beyond that.
Anna Hazare came to public attention in 2011 when he started an indefinite hunger strike to exert pressure on the Indian government to enact a stringent anti-corruption law, The Lokpal Bill, 2011 as envisaged in the Jan Lokpal Bill, for the institution of an ombudsman with the power to deal with corruption in public places. The fast led to nation-wide protests in his support.
