In India, politics decides everything and political leaders generally give every question a political angle. It happened again when Shiv Sena had blasted the pub culture for incidents such as molestation outside JW Marriott hotel in Mumbai on the very first day of the New Year.
Almost everyone started blaming others for the incident happened with both NRI women. Media blamed police force, police criticized media for unnecessarily highlighting the incident, people accused police for their functioning and Shiv Sena held media and the high lifestyle and defended the police in this case.
The party strongly defended the policemen who were on duty in Mumbai on December 31, 2007 and criticized news channels for sensationalizing the issue. The party wrote in the editorial in ‘Samana’ that the media was taking potshots at the police.
They were trying to act as the moral crusader, however in reality they were just trying to get high TRPs to outdo one another in order by highlighting the incident unnecessarily.
Now, Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) chief Raj Thackeray also took a similar stand in this issue and went a step forward than rival Shiv Sena by accompanying the 14 accused to Deputy chief minister R R Patil’s residence at Malabar Hills. Raj told Patil that all the accused arrested by POlice were innocent.
The MNS has been maintaining that the arrested youngsters were innocent. According to him, no Maharashtrian would behave in such a way what happened on New Year Night.
Earlier, police had arrested 14 persons on charges of molesting two NRI women near JW Marriott Hotel on the New Year Night in Mumbai. The Mumbai court later granted bail to all of the accused.
It seems, Raj Thackeray wants to point his fingers again on the people of outside Maharashtra living in Mumbai for this incident by saying that no Maharashtrians can do such immoral acts.
Leading the people from the front is ok but appeasing a section of them even for such acts only to play politics will be proved as dangerous for the society in coming days. Its an appeal to Raj Thackeray not to divide Mumbai in such way.
