A group of alleged Shiv Sena members who tried to disrupt a play being performed in Gurgaon by Pakistani artists were forced to leave after an irate public intervened on Saturday evening.

Around 5-6 men claiming to be Shiv Sainiks barged into an auditorium in Gurgaon, on Delhi's outskirts, where seven Pakistani actors were performing a play "Banjh" (Infertile) on Saturday.

"They shouted slogans like 'Bharat Mata Ki Jai' and 'Pakistan Murdabad' and disrupted the show for about 5-10 minutes," Public Relations Officer of Municipal Corporation of Gurgaon Satbir Rohilla told PTI.

Initial reports claimed that Shiv Sena members even vandalised a Pakistani flag on the stage of the play but Rohilla told the media that no such incident took place. 

The play,  however, soon resumed as the public confronted the Shiv Sainiks and forced them to leave the auditorium. The Sainiks then decided to protest "peacefully" outside the venue.

The director of the Pakistani play, Aamir Nawaz, unmoved by the brief interruption, told The Hindu that the only way to defeat such extremist elements is by increasing cultural exchanges between the two countries. 

Defending their agitation, one of the leaders said that their form of protest is 'peaceful' and it isn't wrong. "We have a lot of ways to protest but we have chosen a peaceful way to protest for now," one of the leaders told ANI.

A few days ago, the Sena activists had blackened the face of former BJP leader Sudheendra Kulkarni, chairman of the Observer Research Foundation, in Mumbai when he refused to cancel the book launch of former Pakistani Foreign Minister Khurshid Mahmud Kasuri in Mumbai.

Soon after that, radical activists of Shiv Sena stormed the BCCI office in Mumbai and forced cancellation of talks between Indian cricket board chief Shashank Manohar and his Pakistani counterpart Shahryar Khan on resumption of cricketing ties between the two countries.

Courtesy International Business Times