LUCKNOW: An FIR was lodged against rapper Honey Singh, who has been a chart-topper this year, by an IPS officer at Lucknow's Gomtinagar police station on Monday.
A hotel in Gurgaon has also cancelled the rapper's performance tonight after online outrage over his offensive lyrics.
IPS officer Amitabh Thakur lodged the FIR against Honey Singh for his `extremely vulgar and indecent songs'. Thakur said in the FIR that the songs were extremely vulgar, indecent and acted as a catalyst for crime against women. He said that the rapper's misogynistic and deeply-troubling lyrics described how woman could be sexually assaulted. "This cannot be accepted at all, particularly when the country is mourning the death of Delhi gang-rape victim and is outraged over increasing crime against women," the complaint says.
Through the day, an online petition, addressed to the management of Bristol Hotel, by a group of social activists demanded the cancellation of Honey Singh's New Year performance at the Gurgaon hotel. The petition campaigned for the singer to be dropped on account of songs in the early phase of his career, which promote violence against women.
The online petition was filed by one Kalpana Misra via change.org who appealed for a ban on the Punjabi rapper's performance.
"These pornographic lyrics are unacceptable and it is because of women-hating sentiments like these that men think that it's fine to do what they did on that bus, that December night in Delhi.
"Let's put a stop to these subversive lyrics that infiltrate the minds of people who don't know better and who then justify to themselves the rightness of a crime that harms another human being, sometimes so severely that they lose their lives," the petition stated.
The rapper was unavailable for comment.
Outrage against the rapper and his derogatory songs have been pouring on social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter for the past few days.
The petition, "GM of The Bristol Hotel Gurgaon India: Stop Honey Singh's performance", has been posted following the death of a 23-year-old victim of a brutal gang-rape in Delhi.
The webpage reads: "The nation is outraged at the ease with which rape happens, at the unnecessary death of a young woman whose entire life lay before her. We know that these rapes occur because in the India of today rape is acceptable to many men."
The FIR in Lucknow has been registered under the Sections 292, 293 and 294 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC). These IPC sections deal with display of obscene material, circulation of obscene material among people through different mediums, indulging in obscene act in a public place and singing, reciting or uttering obscene song or words in a public place to the annoyance of others. Maximum punishment under these sections is three years.
In his complaint, Thakur had also asked for slapping Section 509 of the IPC on Singh but police refused to do so. Section 509 covers uttering any word, making a gesture or indulging in any act which amounts to insulting the modesty of a woman.
28-year-old Honey Singh raps mostly in a mix of English and Punjabi and has lent his voice in recent Bollywood films like 'Khiladi 786', 'Cocktail' and 'Luv Shuv Te Chicken Khurana'. Honey Singh's songs like "Lak 28 kudi da", "Brown rang" and "Angrezi beat" are peppy and popular among masses. But it is his 2006 song "C**t", which has been pinpointed in the petition by Kalpana Mishra. He had two songs on YouTube's list of top 10 most-popular videos of 2012 for India.
