Uttar Pradesh police have registered a case against a group of people from an organisation chief minister Yogi Adityanath was once associated with, cracking down on the fringe Hindutva outfit over objectionable comments against the minority community and alleged incitement to violence.

Twenty-one people have been booked, among them the Moradabad district president of the Vishwa Hindu Mahasangh, Satish Dhal.

Adityanath was the Mahasangh’s national president before the saffron-robed mahant turned politician took over as chief minister in 2017.

A source close to Adityanath said the chief minister “has never said that he was not associated with the Vishwa Hindu Mahasangh but he had distanced himself from it after becoming CM”.

“He doesn’t want any organisation, with which he was associated in the past, to get involved in any movement that gives a bad name to his government,” the source added.

Dhal and the others are accused of trying to instigate the majority community in Moradabad, about 400km from Lucknow, to resort to violence against those who have been opposing the Citizenship Amendment Act and the National Register of Citizens.

Nawal Marwah, a police inspector of the Civil Lines Area of Moradabad city, said: “Sarvesh Kumar, camp police outpost in-charge, has registered an FIR against Dhal and his associates for trying to vitiate the communal atmosphere and provoke one community against the other.”

He said Dhal, a local businessman, had on Wednesday allegedly raised slogans against a community and also asserted that majority groups should attack a community.

Dhal and the other Mahasangh members, including Vinod Saxena, Rahul Singh, Pulkit Sharma, Atul Bhatnagar, Popad Lal and Naresh Srimali, have been booked under Section 295A, the penal code provision that deals with deliberate and malicious intent to outrage the religious feelings of any class, and “insults or attempts to insult the religion or the religious beliefs of that class”.

Those found guilty under this provision can be jailed for up to three years, or fined, or both.

Dhal denied they had made any objectionable remark. “We were protesting against the statement of Waris Pathan and burnt the effigy of All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen leader Asaduddin Owaisi. It is untrue that we made any objectionable remark against anybody,” he said.

Pathan, a Mumbai-based AIMIM leader, is alleged to have told a public meeting in Kalaburagi, north Karnataka, on February 16 that “15 crore Muslims were more than a match for 100 crore Hindus”.

Pathan had later said he was withdrawing his words.

Last week, a case was registered in Moradabad against former Uttar Pradesh governor Aziz Qureshi and 12 others for giving “hate speeches” on an Idgah ground on February 22.