Award-winning poet Srijato Bandyopadhyay said on Wednesday that an arrest warrant had been issued against him.

The warrant, issued by the “Additional Chief Judicial Magistrate” of “Krishnagar, Nadia (In-Charge)”, is against “Srijata Bandhopadhyay” and is to be executed by the inspector in charge of Golf Green police station.

The “complaint case” was registered in 2019, according to the document. The warrant directs his production before the magistrate on June 11.

Although the warrant does not specifically mention why he has been called, Srijato told The Telegraph that an FIR had been registered against him in 2019 over a 2017 poem that had a line that allegedly denigrated a Hindu god.

“An arrest warrant has been issued in my name. The news is not fake, it is cent per cent true. So far this much. Will speak later,” Srijato wrote in a Facebook post on Wednesday evening, without mentioning if the warrant had been served on him.

A senior Kolkata Police officer said they had not received the warrant till Wednesday evening.

Speaking to this newspaper, Srijato said that initially he was unaware of the existence of a warrant against him. However, as the social media buzz about his imminent arrest grew louder, he enquired and found out that it was not actually a rumour.

Asked what led to the warrant, Srijato said it was related to an FIR lodged against him in 2019. “I have 22-24 cases against me. It is difficult for me to keep track of each of those,” the poet said.

Srijato said that “apparently”, two summonses had been served on him in connection with those cases, but he had received none of them.

“I have not left the country, and our caregiver is present at our home 24X7. We receive multiple couriers, books and letters every day. None at our home ever received the summonses. However, what never arrived in the first place is being construed as something we did not accept. Hence the warrant,” Srijato said.

The poem that earlier earned him the wrath of the Right-wing ecosystem is titled Abhishap (curse). It is about how religious fanaticism could even lead men to celebrate the assault of women from other religions.

Srijato had insisted that the poem was “political, and not one on religion”.

In 2019, a group stormed an event in Assam’s Silchar town where Srijato was the chief guest. They later threw stones from outside, prompting the police to lock the audience for a few hours as a precaution.

The vandals, allegedly led by the All Assam Bengali Hindu Association, alleged that the poem insulted “Hindu gods”.

Srijato, one of the more popular contemporary Bengali poets who won the Ananda Puraskar in 2004 for the book of poems Uranta Sab Joker, has also written novels, songs and even directed and acted in films.

The arrest warrant on the eve of the elections shocked many.

Linguist and academician Pabitra Sarkar found the warrant “frightening”.

“This is frightening. Bengal always has had a tradition where poets commented on politics and did not simply restrict themselves to their poetry,” he said.

“Every individual has the right to support or oppose a political ideology or a political party. Penalising someone for speaking out against an ideology is undemocratic and dangerous,” Sarkar, a former vice-chancellor of Rabindra Bharati University, said.

Srijato had on Tuesday spoken at a gathering of the Trinamool-leaning Desh Bnachao Mancha in Bhabanipur, where chief minister Mamata Banerjee is pitted against the BJP’s Suvendu Adhikari.