Lion AKBAR, Lioness SITA Kept In Same Enclosure At Siliguri, VHP Moves Court Citing ‘Insult’ To Hindu Religion

The VHP’s plea was stated before a bench of Justice Saugata Bhattacharyya on Friday, 16 February, and has been listed for hearing on Tuesday, 20 February.

Lion ‘Akbar’ And Lioness ‘Sita’: For the past few years, cases of interfaith love affairs and marriages have been brought to the attention of the authorities, especially when the girl is a Hindu and the boy is a Muslim. Certain Hindu outfits like the Bajrang Dal, Sri Ram Sena, and the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) have raised strong objections and opposed these kinds of alliances by terming them as an attempt by the minority community to deceptively convert girls from the majority community to Islam.

This phenomenon has been termed Love Jihad.

Yet again one such case of Love Jihad has been reported from West Bengal where the Bengal wing of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) has moved the Calcutta High Court’s Circuit Bench at Jalpaiguri challenging the forest department’s move to allegedly keep a lion named “Akbar” with a lioness named “Sita” in the same enclosure at Siliguri’s Safari Park.

The VHP’s plea was stated before a bench of Justice Saugata Bhattacharyya on Friday, 16 February, and has been listed for hearing on Tuesday, 20 February.

The State’s Forest Authorities and Bengal’s Safari Park director have been made parties to the case.

What is even more intriguing is that the reports say that the two big cats were recently brought in from Sepahijala Zoological Park in Tripura and forest department officials have claimed that they did not rename them and that they had already been named before arriving on 13 February.

The main objection to keeping the two lions in the same enclosure is that the male is named Akbar which was the name of one of the renowned Mughal Emperors of the subcontinent, while the lioness is named Sita, one of the most important characters in Valmiki’s Ramayana, and she is considered a deity in the Hindu religion.

The VHP is claiming that the felines had been renamed by the State’s forest department and that housing ‘Sita’ with ‘Akbar’ would be an insult to the Hindu religion and they have asked for the name of the lioness to be changed.

The matter is slated for hearing on Tuesday, 20 February.