india

Updated: Jun 08, 2020 02:10 IST

Amit Shukla, the Jabalpur man who tweeted about cancelling a Zomato delivery ostensibly because he was assigned a “non-Hindu” delivery man, is being slapped with a good behaviour bond by the Madhya Pradesh police, a senior police officer said.

He has also gone off the grid on Twitter, the social media platform where he first gave his reasons for cancelling his order with Zomato that sparked off a huge storm, divided Twitter and sparked off debate about religious intolerance in the country.

Amit Shukla had tagged Zomato and said had cancelled his order as “they allocated a non Hindu rider”. “They said they can’t change rider and can’t refund on cancellation, I said you can’t force me to take a delivery I don’t want…” he tweeted.

He did get it back from Zomato which responded that “food doesn’t have a religion. It is a religion”.

The Madhya Pradesh police felt that Amit Shukla had done more than just setting the social media platform on fire and set out trying to locate him.

Amit Singh, the police chief of Jabalpur district, told HT that Shukla’s reported comments amounted to “hurting religious sentiments of people. This is a crime”.

The cops eventually settled for taking action against him under the code of criminal procedure rather than the penal code because there were no complainants.

“We are taking preventive action against the man. The police have written to the district administration in this regard,” Jabalpur superintendent of police Amit Singh said late on Thursday evening.

The local revenue officer, who wields powers of an executive magistrate under the CrPC, will issue the formal notice and action.

“Now, the tehsildar concerned will send a notice to him to appear before him to be bound over for a certain period. If the man commits offence again during the period he will face police action,” Singh told HT.

Police also said they have also put Shukla under surveillance as he had violated constitutional provisions where there is no place for any kind of untouchability and acts against religious harmony.

Zomato founder Deepinder Goyal backed his employees, tweeting that “We are proud of the idea of India and the diversity of our esteemed customers and partners. We aren’t sorry to lose any business that comes in the way of our values.”