NCB Zonal Director Sameer Wankede’s father Dhyandev K Wankhede has filed a police complaint against Maharashtra minister Nawab Malik under the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act for allegedly making false accusations about his family’s caste.
The complaint was filed with the Assistant Commissioner of Police of the Oshiwara division in Mumbai. In his complaint, Dhyandev stated that Malik, in a newspaper interview, made a false statement about his family members and their caste, ANI reported. “Not only that, on several occasions, while doing interaction with the print media as well as the electronic media, the said accused Nawab Malik has made derogatory statements and allegations against me and my family regarding our caste. That I have the footage/videos of said press/news events as well as concerning news articles,” the written complaint read.
Dhyandev had also filed a defamation suit against Malik and sought damages to the tune of Rs 1.25 crore for allegedly making defamatory comments against his son and family through press conferences and via social media. The suit stated that the statements by Malik that Wankhede is a Muslim amounted to questioning the religious beliefs of the family by disputing that they are not Hindus. The suit also sought directions to Malik to take back all defamatory statements made by him so far and also to delete all his tweets posted against the plaintiff and his family members.
The Bombay High Court on Monday directed Malik to submit an affidavit in response to the defamation suit by Tuesday, and posted the natter for hearing on Wednesday.
-with PTI inputs