A man working for a Dubai-based firm has been sacked for insulting Islam and now faces a jail term. Rakesh B Kitturmath has since then apologised for his bigotry saying that he respected all religions.
The Indian man, who originally hails from Ranebennuri in Karnataka, worked for Emrill Services headquartered in Dubai. The company’s CEO Stuart Harrison told Gulf News that Kitturmath had been sacked from his job and efforts were underway to hand him over to the Dubai Police.
“Kitturmath’s employment stands terminated with immediate effect. He will be handed over to Dubai Police. We have a zero-tolerance policy towards such hate crimes,” Harrison was quoted as saying.
Faced with imminent arrest by the Dubai Police, the bigot from Karnataka issued a public apology saying, “It was a mistake from me and I respect the all religions and I don’t bad thoughts of any religion I apologize for this. (sic)”
In his viral Facebook post, the bigot from Karnataka had used a derogatory term for Muslims and mocked namaaz.
Rakesh B Kitturmath from Abu Dhabi believes that those who pray five times a day are pigs.
He works at Emrill. Time for him to come back.cc @Mazharfarooqui @ADPoliceHQ
Send his SS to https://t.co/rf3ZN2BXzl pic.twitter.com/MX7q3PKB8q
— Zed (@DeadZedb) April 9, 2020
This comes just days after another bigot working in Abu Dhabi was sacked from his job for insulting Islam amidst the coronavirus pandemic. Mitesh Udeshi, whose Linkedin profile says that he’s working as Financial Planning and Analysis Manager at United Al Saqer Group in Abu Dhabi, was accused of posting a satirical cartoon mocking Islam on his Facebook page. He had used a cartoon to say that a ‘Corona Suicide Spitter’ could kill 2,000 people while a Jihadi suicide bomber could kill just 20 people by detonating explosives.
Mitesh’s post was in reference to the pro-Hindutva Indian media outlets’ attempts to link the spread of coronavirus to the Tablighi Jamaat, a Muslim religious group.
Also facing action is one Sumeet Bhandari, who works as the ‘Director at Future Vision Events & Weddings’ in Dubai. He’s accused of asking an Indian job-seeker to go back to Pakistan because of his identity as a Muslim. The WhatsApp conversation of Sumeet with Shamshad Alam from the Indian state of Maharashtra had gone viral on social media last week.
In March this year, Dubai-based Indian chef Trilok Singh was sacked for issuing rape threats to a woman in Delhi on Facebook and abusing Muslims.
Last year, a UAE-based company Security-Transguard had sacked one of its employees for celebrating the New Zealand terror attack that killed 50 Muslim worshippers. The UAE government had later deported the man, identified as Rony Singh, to an unnamed country.
In 2018, a Gulf company had fired one of its employees from Kerala for an insensitive social media post mocking the plight of flood victims in the southern Indian state.
The same year, Dubai’s JW Marriott Marquis Hotel had sacked Chef Atul Kochhar, who ran the hotel’s Indian restaurant, Rang Mahal, inside its premises after he sensationally posted hateful tweets against Islam and Muslims.