Sportspersons alone aren’t at the receiving end of Thakur’s appeal spree. He has also filed a case against a major publisher for “wrongly printing” the Tricolour in a Class VI book, and moved the court against the film Hanuman Returns. Pandey and he have made everyone from the film’s producer to Sharmila Tagore a party for joking about Hindu gods like Hanuman.

Recently, when a woman’s organisation calling itself the Lathi Brigade asked them to withdraw the case against Sania, saying the picture of her with her feet on a table that also sported a Tricolour was the result of trick photography, they too got slapped with a legal notice. Thakur’s charge is that their comment amounted to contempt of court.

Right now he is preparing for January 26 when, he says, most people, especially children, insult the flag by trampling upon it.

“Me and my friends will move around the city from 2 pm onwards on Republic Day collecting flags lying everywhere and destroy them in private with full dignity,” he says, quoting from the Flag Code of India, 2002. Like Pandey, he claims to have memorised the code’s provisions.

Thakur did Hindi (Honours) from an open university and dabbled in computer education before taking to the property business. And no, he or Pandey’s affiliations don’t lie with the Sangh Parivar. The two did try their hand at politics, but via the Nationalist Congress Party, a career that did not click.