By Heena Fatima
New Delhi: The complainant in the case against a government school principal in Rajasthan’s Kota has told ThePrint he was advised to file an FIR by the assistant of education minister Madan Dilawar. The principal, Shafi Mohammad Ansari, was arrested Saturday for deleting Ganesh Chaturthi wishes from an official WhatsApp group of which he is an admin.
Ansari was granted bail and released the same day on a bond of ₹20,000.
Pradeep Nagar, the complainant—also an aide of BJP MLA from Sangod and junior minister Heeralal Nagar—told ThePrint that he had called state Education Minister Madan Dilawar after the incident, but the minister’s assistant answered the phone and suggested filing an FIR against Ansari.
A family member of Ansari, meanwhile, defended him saying the government school principal was unfamiliar with WhatsApp and deleted the messages by mistake. “Ansari sahab is not tech-savvy and was unaware of WhatsApp features, which led to the message being deleted by mistake.”
The family member argued that Ansari intended to delete the message only for himself using the “delete for me” option, but mistakenly tapped the “delete for everyone” instead for both messages in question.
Ansari was arrested Saturday in Laturi village, Kota Rural, after he deleted two messages wishing members of an official School Management Development Committee (SMDC) WhatsApp group on Ganesh Chaturthi.
Despite Ansari saying it was done unintentionally, pro-Hindutva outfits filed a complaint against him the same day. They also submitted a memorandum to the police accusing Ansari of ‘repeat offences’, without giving details, and demanded strict action, including his dismissal.
The government senior secondary school, of which Ansari has been principal for the past two years, has more than 300 students.
This story was originally published in theprint.in. Read the full story here.