India’s Chief Justice BR Gavai nearly took a shoe to the face on Monday after a lawyer – angered by a joke the jurist had cracked about the divinity of the Hindu god Vishnu last month – had stood up and hurled it toward the bench during a hearing on an unrelated case, the BBC reports.
Rakesh Kishore, now suspended from practice over the attempted assault, was removed from the courtroom swiftly after raising his hand to tell everyone present he did it. “India won’t tolerate insult to Sanatan Dharma [Hinduism],” Kishore said as he was dragged out by security guards.
Kishore later told local media he’d been raging over Gavai’s remarks during a September 16th dismissal of a petition concerning the restoration of a statue depicting Vishnu – one of the top gods in the Hindu pantheon – at a temple in Madhya Pradesh, telling the plaintiffs to “go and ask the deity himself to do something,” lol. The lawyer said he’d “not been able to sleep” since the burn.
Surprisingly for a top official in Hindu-supremacist dictator Nareendra Modi’s India, Gavai is actually a Buddhist, which had to be a factor in Kishore’s shoe rage. Gavai had later last month attempted to unruffle the feathers by saying he respects all religions, but such talk evidently was seen as empty.