Maharashtra principal booked as students perform to ‘Pakistani’ song

A case has been filed against a principal and two teachers in Maharashtra’s Jalna district after students performed to a song claimed to be Pakistani at a event, PTI reported on Friday.

The principal Wazhiyoddin Siddiqui claimed that the song is from the Turkish television series Ertuğrul.

The event was reportedly held in February 2025.

The three were booked for acts endangering the sovereignty, unity and integrity of India, promoting enmity between groups, spreading misinformation affecting national integration and circulating false information likely to cause public alarm.

Social media posts had claimed that the students at the school in Partur town had danced to a Pakistani song during the annual programme and that a photograph of a former Pakistani commando Mumtaz Qadri had been displayed during the performance, PTI reported.

Qadri was hanged in 2016 for assassinating Salman Taseer, the governor of Pakistan’s Punjab province, in 2011. Qadri, who was among Taseer’s bodyguards, had claimed that he killed the politician for defending Asia Bibi, a Pakistani Christian convicted of blasphemy and sentenced to death. Bibi was subsequently acquitted.

The principal claimed that the photograph displayed during the event was of an actor from the Turkish series and that the footage that was widely shared on social media had been manipulated, the news...

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