A tiger named Akbar cannot live with a tigress named Sita, the case is in court

A Hindu nationalist organization in India has filed an application in court to prevent a pair of tigers and tigresses from being kept together in a zoo.

It has been argued in the petition that the lion is named after the 16th century Mughal emperor Akbar and the lioness after the Hindu goddess Sita.

According to the French news agency AFP, the well-known right-wing Hindu organization Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) approached the court after reports of keeping a tigress named Sita and a tiger named Akbar in the same place in the state of West Bengal. .

Akbar was a Mughal emperor who established Muslim rule over most of the Indian subcontinent. Now Hindu nationalist groups say that it was a period of slavery.

Vishwa Hindu Parishad leader Anup Mondal said on Sunday that Sita could not live with Mughal Emperor Akbar as it would hurt the sentiments of the country’s majority Hindu population.

The Vishwa Hindu Parishad has filed an application in the court on Friday seeking to change the name of the lion pair.

The VHP, in its petition filed in court, said: ‘Such an act amounts to blasphemy and is a direct attack on the religious faith of all Hindus.’

Critics say religious intolerance has risen in the world’s most populous country since Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist government came to power in 2014.

Modi is expected to win a third term in the general elections in April.

Mondal said Akbar, the lion, was first named after the Hindu god Rama when he was in the neighboring state of Tripura, which is controlled by Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

But the tiger’s name was changed after it was brought to West Bengal, which is controlled by the opposition Trinamool Congress party.

The petition by Vishwa Hindu Parishad has demanded a ban on the use of religious names for animals in zoos.

West Bengal forest department officer Deepak Kumar Mandal said the tiger and tigress have now been separated.

The court will hear the VHP’s plea on February 20.

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