Somewhere in Russia....

A Russian court on Wednesday dismissed a petition seeking a ban on a translated version of Bhagawad Gita for being “extremist”, bringing cheers to followers across the world months after the issue threatened to strain Moscow’s strategic ties with India. “The court in the Siberian city of Tomsk has dismissed the plea,” Sadhu Priya Das of Moscow Iskcon said after the verdict. State prosecutors in Tomsk had filed an appeal against a lower court's dismissal of their original plea seeking a ban on “Bhagawad Gita As It Is”, written by A C Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, the founder of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (Iskcon). They had claimed that the text was “extremist” literature full of hatred and insult to non-believers which promoted social discord. The higher court in Tomsk “kept the verdict of the lower court intact”, Das said. As the judge dismissed the plea, the followers in the packed courtroom burst into applause, he said. In a statement, the Tomsk district court said after Wednesday’s verdict that it had decided “to leave unchanged” a lower court's December 28 ruling that the book did not contain extremist material.