Police in Madhya Pradesh's Gwalior have registered a case against former Uttar Pradesh minister and Samajwadi Party (SP) leader Swami Prasad Maurya for his alleged remarks against Hindu epic 'Ramcharitmanas', an official said on Friday.

The first information report (FIR) was registered at Gwalior police station on Thursday based on a complaint lodged by Hindu Mahasabha, he said. Besides Maurya, eight others were also named in the first information report (FIR), the police official said.

Ramcharitmanas, an epic poem in Awadhi language, is based on the Ramayana and has been composed by 16th-century Bhakti movement poet Tulsidas. Maurya, a prominent OBC leader from UP, kicked up a controversy recently by alleging that certain verses of the Ramcharitmanas "insult" a large section of society on the basis of caste and demanded that these be "banned".

As per the FIR filed in Gwalior, the case against Maurya and others was registered under Indian Penal Code (IPC) sections 153-A (promoting enmity between different groups on ground of religion, race, place of birth, residence, language, etc., and doing acts prejudicial to maintenance of harmony) and 295 (injuring or defiling place of worship, with intent to insult the religion of any class).

Gwalior's Superintendent of Police (SP) Amit Sanghi said, "On the application of Hindu Mahasabha, this case (against Maurya) was handed over to the crime branch for legal action." Hindu Mahasabha's vice president Jaivir Bharadwaj alleged that the former Uttar Pradesh minister has disrespected the Ramcharitmanas.

"If the accused persons are not arrested by Mahashivratri (being celebrated on February 18), then agitation on the issue will be intensified after the outfit's meeting in Rishikesh on February 19," he said.

The OBC Mahasabha, however, came out in support of Maurya and demanded action against those who "disrespected" him after the FIR.

"If an impartial probe is not conducted in the matter, then our organisation will launch an agitation, which we will take right from the streets to Parliament," OBC Mahasabha's national executive member Dharmendra Singh Kushwaha said.

On January 22, Maurya had claimed that the Hindu epic contained passages discriminatory against women and backward castes. At least two FIRs have been registered against Maurya in Lucknow, one of them after photocopies of some portions of the Ramcharitmanas were burned in a protest held by an OBC organisation.

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