Veritas International Express | Archival Report

MIRA ROAD, MUMBAI — As Veritas International Express revisits significant moments in the history of the Shia community, this archival report recalls an incident from November 2017, when senior Shia cleric Maulana Syed Hasan Imam Rizvi Zangipuri led members of the Shia community to a police station in Mira Road following remarks made on social media by journalist Rohit Sardana.

Maulana Syed Hasan Imam Rizvi Zangipuri holds the written complaint as he proceeds with members of the Shia community to Mira Road’s Naya Nagar Police Station in 2017.

 

At the time, several Muslim groups across India expressed strong objections to a tweet posted by Sardana in the context of the controversy. The post made references to revered women in Islam and Christianity, including Hazrat Fatima Zahra (SA) and Maryam (SA). The remarks triggered protests and police complaints in several cities.

In Mira Road, members of the Shia community approached the Naya Nagar Police Station seeking legal action. Maulana Syed Hasan Imam Rizvi Zangipuri, a prominent Shia religious leader and the Chief of Shia Population of Mira Road, was among those who took the matter to the authorities. Accompanied by a large group of shia community members, he proceeded to the police station and submitted a complaint concerning the remarks that the complainants considered offensive to religious sentiments.

The episode became part of a wider national controversy in November 2017. Reports at the time recorded police complaints against Sardana at several police stations, while protests were also held in different parts of the country.

Veritas International Express presents this report as an archival account of the 2017 incident, published in 2026 to document an important episode in the history of community activism in Mira Road.

Editor’s note: Contemporary reports describe complaints being filed. Unless the original FIR document is available for verification, “complaint” or “police complaint” is more precise than stating unequivocally that Maulana Zangipuri personally “filed an FIR.”