Some MNS activists slapped a shopkeeper in Girgaon in south Mumbai on Tuesday, December 3 a day after he allegedly asked a woman to speak to him in Marwadi instead of Marathi, citing the BJP’s emergence to power in the state.
The police said the incident occurred on Monday evening at Khetwadi in Girgaon when the Marathi-speaking woman visited his store. The shopkeeper allegedly asked her to use the Marwadi language. No complaint was lodged in this connection.
A video in which the shopkeeper is seen apologising to the woman in front of the activists of the Raj Thackeray-led Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS), after being slapped by them, went viral on social media platforms.
In that video, the woman says in Marathi that the shopkeeper asked her to speak to her in Marwadi as the BJP has come to power in Maharashtra. She said she later went to a prominent BJP leader from her constituency to inform him about it, but he told her not to promote enmity between groups.
She then approached the local functionaries of the MNS in the Malabar Hill area and narrated the incident. Following this, the shopkeeper was called to the party office, where he was slapped and asked to apologise, which he did. The police said that the matter was resolved after he apologised to the woman and the Marathi-speaking community.