Hindutva Workers Paint Anandabazar Patrika Office Saffron Amid FIR Row

Hindutva workers descended on the Kolkata office of Bengali daily Anandabazar Patrika on Tuesday, September 1, painting the white pillars at its entrance saffron as police officers stood by without intervening.
Videos from outside the office showed two men dressed in saffron clothing applying paint to the pillars. Several others wearing saffron turbans raised slogans including 'Bhagwa ka apmaan, nahi sahega Hindustan' (Hindustan will not tolerate the insult of saffron) and 'Anandabazar Patrika haye haye.' The demonstrations reportedly continued for nearly an hour, with workers telling a gathered crowd, ‘This land belongs to Shyama Prasad Mukherjee. This land belongs to Swami Vivekananda. This land is Saffron.’
The protest came after Anandabazar Patrika ran the front-page headline 'gerua gundami', translated as 'Saffron Hooliganism: Logo broken during raid on JU campus', on August 21. The report covered clashes at Kolkata's Jadavpur University between members of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad and Left-affiliated student groups.
An FIR was registered on August 28 at the Bowbazar police station following a complaint against senior journalists of the newspaper, including editor Ishani Dutta Roy and chief reporter Soma Mukherjee. The complaint was filed by spiritual leader Sanjay Shastri Maharaj, who argued that saffron is a religious symbol for Hindus and not a political colour. Linking it to any act of public disorder went beyond criticism of any political organisation or ideology, Maharaj told The Wire. He alleged the headline 'hurt Hindu sentiments and disturbed public peace' and called it ‘highly objectionable, derogatory, misleading and offensive.’
West Bengal Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari had on August 25 demanded the paper apologise within 24 hours and print a clarification on its front page stating the phrasing was wrong. 'Otherwise, there will be a protest by those wearing saffron,' he said. Without naming the newspaper directly, Adhikari warned, 'I will ask a news outlet in West Bengal to do political campaigns and political criticism. But don't attack saffron. The result will be terrible. You will not be able to handle the terrible consequences.