Mumbai: Mumbai Police on Friday arrested seven Maharashtra Navnirman Sena activists after they forced two shop owners to pull down their boards written in Gujarati. The seven men, including MNS leader Sandeep Deshpande, were booked for illegal assembly but were later released from the police station.
The men visited two establishments -- a restaurant at Mahim, and a prominent jewellery store in Prabhadevi. Both shops had their name boards written in Gujarati. “We went there and asked why their name boards were in Gujarati. If you live in Maharashtra, you take your resources from here, then you must use the Marathi language,” Sandeep Deshpande narrated to News 18.
He claimed that the shopowners themselves pulled down the name boards after their objection. “We did not pull them down,” he asserted. We could not verify the claim as none of the two shop owners approached the police with any complaints.
“The Mumbai Police did not receive any complaint. We took suo motto action in the case,” a police personnel said.
In video clips, the MNS activists are heard shouting slogans, too. This is not the first time MNS has objected to boards and announcements in other languages.
Earlier this month, MNS representatives were in Bengaluru to attend a seminar by Kannada Rakshan Vedike. The organization had invited regional chauvinistic parties to come together to plan a strategy for the spread of regional languages in their respective States.
MNS had earlier protested against Gujarati name plates. They had also objected to telecom companies’ and banks’ announcements in Gujarati and Hindi.
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