After Income Tax raid on temple, Shiv Sena asks why spare mosques, churches

MUMBAI: An income tax raid on the priests of the Trimbakeshwar Temple in Nashik has irked BJP ally Shiv Sena, which slammed the Narendra Modi government for trying to become “secular” and questioned why it had not raided churches and mosques in search of black money. In an editorial on Friday, Sena mouthpiece ‘Saamana’ called the IT raid an “anti-Hindu” act.

“Will these brave IT officers raid the madrasas and masjids that are getting money from abroad? No, because these people don’t have that much guts. In the end, these people got only the purohits of the temple to raid,” it said.

The editorial spoke of the Modi government playing a brand of secularism that would shame that of the Congress, Lalu Prasad and Mulayam Singh Yadav, and accused it of just paying lip service to Hindus. The Saamana went out of its way to defend the priests.

“A lot is being spoken about the money recovered from these priests but how much would this money be? Can you besmirch the reputation of the entire priest community if you get just Rs 1crore each from these priests,” it asked.

The priests earned the money through hard work and not through “gambling or liquor contracts”, it added. The editorial said it was not against recovery of black money or authorities for conducting such raids, but accused the Modi government of targeting only the ‘poor’ and ‘Hindus’.

It said the government was going after peoplewho have accumulated a “little bit of loose change”, instead of those who are hoarding mountains of cash.