india

Updated: Apr 27, 2019 03:37 IST

Fishermen from Worli Koliwada claimed two of them were detained by the Dadar police on Thursday evening for forwarding text messages on a popular mobile messaging application about sporting black flags at a Sena rally. The Dadar police have refuted the claims.

Yuva Sena chief Aaditya Thackeray held a rally near Worli Koliwada on Thursday evening, for the upcoming Lok Sabha elections. One of the fishermen from the locality said, “When we found out that Sena was holding a rally in our area, we circulated a private message on a closed group about sporting black flags to protest against the party. Two fishermen responsible who forwarded these messages were detained. The police let them go only by 9.30pm.”

However, when HT contacted, the Dadar police denied any such incident. Divakar Shelke, senior inspector of Dadar police station, said, “We did not detain anybody during the rally.”

Lawyer Gayatri Singh, who helped the detained fishermen, said, “I can’t reveal the details because the fishermen do not want that.”

According to another fisherman said, “Until evening, they did not know where these two fishermen were. If we had protested against the rally, it was to be a peaceful protest.”

Aaditya Thackeray did not respond to messages from Hindustan Times.

The Worli Koliwada has traditionally been a Sena stronghold. The fishermen from Worli, however, have been opposing the coastal road project and have been at loggerheads with the Shiv Sena-led BMC for over a year.

In December last year, several other fishermen were detained by police for stalling project work.