An anti-Brahmin CD allegedly being circulated by a Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) MP has sparked off a major controversy in Uttar Pradesh.
Mayawati orders CBI probe into the matterLUCKNOW: An anti-Brahmin CD allegedly being circulated by a Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) MP has sparked off a major controversy in Uttar Pradesh and rocked the Mayawati government’s Dalit-Brahmin equilibrium.
The government has recommended a CBI inquiry into the matter and ordered confiscation of the CDs titled Teesri Azadi. An FIR has also been lodged against a news channel showing objectionable footage from the CD that projects Lord Ram as anti-Dalit and shows him making derogatory and casteist remarks against the lower castes. Three people have been arrested.
Sources told DNA the state government had written to the I&B ministry seeking a ban on the channel.
“Neither my government, nor the Bahujan Samaj Party has anything to do with the CD,” chief minister Mayawati asserted at a press conference here on Wednesday. “An FIR has been lodged against the TV channel,” she said.
Mayawati said her party MP Lalmani Prasad, whom the channel has charged with circulating the CD, was in no way involved in either the production or the distribution of the said CD.
The controversy revolves around Teesri Azadi, a film by Jabbar Patel, which has been on the internet since July 2006. According to the news channel, the Dr Ambedkar Samaj Sudhar Samiti based in Basti in remote east UP had made CDs of the film and got them distributed throughout UP as well as in some other states, including
Maharashtra and Gujarat.
The channel has alleged that BSP MP from Basti Lalmani Prasad was a member of this samiti and was behind the distribution of the film on CD. However, Prasad told DNA: “I was a member of the samiti a long time ago. But after I joined the BSP, I have had no contact with it.”
g_deepak@dnaindia.net 
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