Uttarakhand Police Register FIR Against Rahul Gandhi For Insulting Religious Rituals

An FIR has been registered against Congress leader Rahul Gandhi following a complaint by a member of the Valmiki community, who alleged that Gandhi gave a casteist spin to a religious ritual performed at the venue of a Congress event in Haldwani, police said on Sunday. The case was registered by Haldwani City Kotwali Police on August 30 under provisions of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita relating to the promotion of enmity between groups and deliberate acts intended to outrage religious feelings, along with the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989. The registration of the case has escalated a political and social controversy that had been building in the state for nearly three weeks.

The complaint was filed by Amit Kumar, a resident of Jawahar Nagar and a member of the Shri Ram Sena Dharmarth Seva Nyas, who said he was present during the "ritual and cleanliness drive" at Haldwani's Ramlila Ground and that Gandhi's remarks at a press conference in Delhi on August 29 hurt the sentiments of the Valmiki and broader Scheduled Caste community. According to Kumar's account, the ritual followed a Congress rally at the same venue on August 8, addressed by Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge. Three days later, local organisation members, including Kumar, inspected the ground, found litter and liquor bottles left behind, and carried out a cleanup along with a traditional havan shuddhikaran intended to restore the site's sanctity.

Kumar's complaint states that members of the Scheduled Caste community themselves took part in both the cleaning and the ritual, and that the event had no connection to Kharge's caste. He accused Gandhi of portraying the ritual as discriminatory without verifying the circumstances, alleging that Gandhi's characterisation wrongly linked the participants to untouchability and cast them as "anti-Dalit," thereby mischaracterising Scheduled Caste participants as practitioners of caste discrimination. He further claimed the remarks damaged the personal reputation and security of those involved and promoted enmity between social groups. A member of the organising group told reporters that people were wrongly claiming the ritual targeted a specific individual, insisting it was purely a cleanup of a public ground and questioning the interpretation Gandhi had placed on it.

Also Read: UP Police Shoot Dead Two Prime Suspects Linked To Haryanvi Singer Ankit Balyan's Murde

Gandhi had earlier criticised the ritual as reflecting caste bias and called for an FIR to be registered under the SC/ST Act against those responsible, a position his sister Priyanka Gandhi Vadra also backed, describing the episode as a "reprehensible and shameful mindset" that she said amounted to a violation of the SC/ST Act. That earlier demand has now been overtaken by the FIR filed against Gandhi himself, a development Congress leaders have characterised as an inversion of accountability. Uttarakhand Congress in-charge Kumari Selja criticised the case as an example of selective action by the state's BJP government, alleging that no action had been taken against those who conducted the ritual even though a complaint against them had reportedly been filed at the same police station on August 18.

She questioned why that earlier complaint had gone unacted upon while the case against Gandhi was registered within days, and further alleged that the state's BJP unit had publicly defended the ritual after it drew criticism. Congress leaders have framed the sequence of events, from the ritual itself to the subsequent FIR, as evidence of a broader pattern they say reflects poorly on the state government's handling of caste-sensitive issues. The dispute adds to a string of legal complaints Gandhi has faced in recent years over remarks touching on caste and community, including cases filed by BJP leaders over his comments on Sikhs, reservations, and Other Backward Class classifications during and after a visit to the United States. As of Sunday, police had not disclosed further details on the status of the investigation into the Haldwani complaint.

Also Read: India Aspires To Be 'Vishwaguru' Not 'Mahashakti', Clarifies RSS Chief Mohan Bhagwat