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Manipuri footballer Seiminlen Doungel, currently playing for Indian Super League (ISL) outfit Jamshedpur FC, received backlash after his alleged ‘derogatory’ social media post directed at Union Home Minister Amit Shah on the ongoing violence in his home state.
Manipur is currently wrapped in a constantly aggravating ethnic violence between the Meitei and Kuki tribal communities. According to the Hindustan Times, Doungel made a comment on his Instagram page on Saturday about the Home Minister's statement in the Parliament on the situation in the northeastern state.
The 29-year-old came in for widespread criticism for his comments after a screenshot of his Instagram story was posted on Twitter by former Jamshedpur district Bharatiya Janta Party (BJP) president Dinesh Kumar.
In his post, Kumar tagged the official Twitter handles of Jamshedpur FC, Jamshedpur Police, and the district administration, and demanded an immediate apology from the footballer.
“The young man who posted indecent and indecent instagram story for the Honorable Home Minister AmitShah is a football player. Notice that JamshedpurFC has a player. Jsr_police Take immediate cognizance. If an apology is not made within 24 hours, then Jamshedpur FC will not be allowed to play, there will be a protest,” he wrote on Twitter.
"Just hope that life will get back to normalcy soon for all community affected" - Seiminlen Doungel on Instagram
As he and Jamshedpur FC continued to receive backlash throughout the day, Seiminlen Doungel soon deleted the said comments from his official handle. He issued an apology in the following post, which read:
“As someone from Manipur who has experienced the violence first hand and has been tagged time and again as illegal immigrant - it has been really frustrating and painful and I just want to apologise for my previous story against the home minister of India Shri Amit Shah and anyone who has been hurt."
“I just hope that life will get back to normalcy soon for all community affected,” hedadded.
Meanwhile, Jamshedpur FC CEO Mukul Chowdhury told HT that the footballer has been asked to steer clear of 'politics' in the future and focus on 'football'.
"Seiminlen has apologised and deleted his story. Moreover, he made the post in his personal capacity. We have asked him to focus on football and not get into politics,” he stated.
The report underlined that Dinesh Kumar and the Bharatiya Janta Party had decided against pursuing the matter further in the wake of Doungel's apology.
