Maha: Bahadur Shah Zafar’s portrait smashed by right-wing group in biryani outlet

Pune: A portrait of Bahadur Shah Zafar hung on the wall of a biryani outlet in Maharashtra’s Kolhapur city was smashed up by a group of young men belonging to a right-wing outfit, who termed the last Mughal emperor a “descendant of Aurangzeb”, police have said.

No complaint was filed against anyone regarding the incident that occurred on Wednesday night, an officer of Rajarampuri police station in Kolhapur said on Thursday.

“Some young men, who belong to a right-wing organisation, were visiting the biryani outlet where they saw Bahadur Shah Zafar’s portrait. They objected to it, saying why the picture of a ‘descendant of Aurangzeb’ had been hung on the wall and asked the eatery staff to remove it,” he said.

“The staff agreed, but the portrait was not removed. On Wednesday night, the group visited the eatery again, took down the portrait and smashed it up,” said the officer.

Bahadur Shah Zafar was the 20th and the last Mughal emperor and also an Urdu poet. He died at age 87 in 1862 in Rangoon in Burma (present-day Myanmar), where he had been exiled after the 1857 rebellion.