A beef food festival scheduled to be held this month in Kolkata has been called off after receiving threat calls, the organiser of the event informed on Friday.
The ‘Kolkata Beef Festival’ renamed the ‘Kolkata Beep Festival’ was scheduled on June 23 at a cafe in central Kolkata’s Sudder Street.
The event management team ‘The Accidental Note’ had put up a Facebook post stating that “one of their team members received over 300 calls, a lot of them to show support, but a lot of them were direct threats”.
“Keyboard warriors kept abusing us and sending us hate-filled messages, and some seemed genuinely hurt by the idea of the festival,” the post further read.
Following the threats, the organisers are not in a position to ensure the safety of the people who were planning to attend the event.
“…everything has been blown out of proportion somehow. Things are not in our control anymore. For all of these reasons, the Kolkata Beep* Festival stands cancelled,” the post read.
“I have been getting continuous calls and had to deactivate my social media account as well. I got calls from Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh and other places,” one of the team members told IANS.
He reiterated that the “event had nothing to do with politics or religion”.
The festival with a wide variety of beef preparations ranging from tenderloin, back ribs and Bolognese pasta to burgers ‘was aimed to celebrate good food’.