When contacted, Bhujbal said the Cyber Crime Cell of Mumbai Police is capable to find out if he had made any threat against Tekchandani. (File Photo)Days after NCP leader Chhagan Bhujbal was booked for allegedly threatening his former associate Lalit Tekchandani, Bhujbal wrote to Chief Minister Eknath Shinde and Deputy Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis recently saying he never abused or threatened Tekchandani and that the latter had been “troubling” him on WhatsApp.
“I had been getting vulgar messages from an unknown mobile number from September 29 after my statement on Goddess Sarswati was presented in a twisted format. I have kept the screenshots of some of those messages. My colleague tried to find out who this number belonged to by calling it twice or thrice. As a result, Samata Parishad workers were asked to check this,” said Bhujbal in his letter, which was sent on October 1.
Bhujbal said that after an FIR was registered against him, he learned that the number belonged to Tekchandani, who has “developed professional enmity against him”. “When I checked with my workers, I came to know that one of my workers, Sapna Mali, had sent a WhatsApp message to him. It was neither abusive nor a threat,” he said in the letter.
When contacted, Bhujbal said the Cyber Crime Cell of Mumbai Police is capable to find out if he had made any threat against Tekchandani. “First of all, he is talking about my speech on Goddess Sarswati, which I made indoors in front of a crowd at Mahatma Phule Samata Parishad. I can speak my mind in front of them. Secondly, I gave a press conference explaining that my statement was twisted,” he said.
“Instead of these social reformers, portraits of Goddesses Saraswati and Sharda are displayed in schools. We haven’t seen them and they haven’t taught us anything. If at all they have taught, it is to three per cent people who kept us away (from education). Why should we pray before them?” Bhujbal had said at a programme in Mumbai.
Bhujbal, a prominent OBC leader from Maharashtra, was speaking at a programme marking completion of 150 years of formation of Satyashodhak Samaj. In his speech, Bhujbal had demanded that portraits of social reformers like Savitribai Phule, Jyotiba Phule, Chhatrapati Shahu Maharaj, Karmaveer Bhaurao Patil and Babasaheb Ambedkar be displayed in schools.