Kumar said the monk Giri, whom he described as a "repeat offender," was formally charged Monday for promoting "enmity between different groups on grounds of religion." The charge can carry a jail term of five years.
In December, Giri and other religious leaders called on Hindus to arm themselves for "a genocide" against Moslems during a meeting in Haridwar, a northern holy town in Uttarakhand, according to a police complaint. He is the second person to be arrested in the case after India's Supreme Court
...the political football known as The Highest Court in the Land, home of penumbrae and emanations...intervened last week.
Uttarakhand state is ruled by Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata. The political party's rise to power in 2014, and landslide reelection in 2019, has led to a spike in attacks against Moslems and other minorities.
Moslems comprise nearly 14% of India's 1.4 billion people, a largely Hindu country that has long proclaimed its multicultural character.
The three-day conference that the monk Giri helped to organized was called the "Dharam Sansad" or "Religious Parliament" and followed on years of rising anti-Moslem hate speech. The closed-door meetings witnessed some of the most explicit calls for violence yet.
Videos from the conference showed multiple Hindu monks, some of whom have close ties to Modi's ruling party, saying Hindus should kill Moslems.
"If 100 of us are ready to kill two million of them, then we will win and make India a Hindu nation," said Pooja Shakun Pandey, a Hindu nationalist leader, referring to the country's Moslem population. Her calls for such a massacre were met with applause from the audience.