A team of the Meghalaya Police is expected to reach the national capital shortly to question the publisher of Class I cursive writing textbooks that depicted Jesus Christ in poor light and sparked off resentment among Christians who constitute 80 per cent of the state population. An FIR against the Delhi publisher was lodged by the principal of St Josephs Girls Higher Secondary School after the textbooks which carried a picture of Jesus Christ holding a cigarette and a beer can reached her school. DSP Vivek Syiem (Crime) told The Indian Express on Sunday: We will send a police team to New Delhi to question Ram Mohan Jha of Skyline Publication. He will be taken into custody if we manage to get an arrest warrant against him from court. He added that the controversial textbooks had been seized from distributors in Shillong. Shillong Diocese Archbishop Rev Dominic Jala said he had already spoken to the National Council of Churches of India,which will take up the issue with the Union Government. Meghalaya Education Minister Ampareen Lyngdoh said the government was contemplating initiating legal action against the publisher. Though only St Josephs Girls Higher Secondary School reported the publication of the picture to the police,a few schools that had reportedly got the same textbooks had immediately returned them to the distributor. A teacher of a private school said: When we found to our horror that the textbooks had a picture of Jesus holding a beer can and a cigarette,we immediately contacted the distributor and returned the textbooks. Syiem said since the publisher was Delhi-based,a violent reaction was ruled out. Those aggrieved by the picture have left it to the police to take legal action against those responsible for putting such an offensive picture of Jesus Christ, he added.
