TOMSK, August 14 - RAPSI. Tomsk Region Prosecutor Vasily Voykin believes that there was too much publicity and backroom politics in a case on banning "Bhagavad Gita As It Is," a translation and commentary of the original Bhagavad Gita Hindu scripture. Meanwhile the prosecutor's office never received a legally sound reply in support of the decision to dismiss the lawsuit.

Voykin said the prosecutor's office would not be disputing the decision of the regional court.

As soon as it became known that the prosecutor's office was disputing the decision of the court of first instance, Voykin responded to critics that his office only did it to get a transparent and legally grounded explanation of the lawsuit's dismissal.

The Tomsk Region Prosecutor's Office initiated the case in June 2011 following its inspection of the Tomsk Society for Krishna Consciousness.

According to Tomsk University experts, as cited by the local prosecutor's office, the book incites religious hatred and humiliates the dignity of people on the basis of sex, race, nationality, language, origin and attitude toward religion.

In December 2011, the Tomsk District Court refused to satisfy the local prosecutor's office's lawsuit to ban the book as extremist, as it found no grounds to substantiate the suit's claims.

The prosecutor's office did not appeal the decision, but the Tomsk Region Court upheld it without any amendments on March 21.

The prosecutor's office's petition to declare "Bhagavad Gita As It Is" extremist has sparked public indignation in India and was called a violation of Hindu rights. Several lawmakers have called on the Russian government to stand up for the rights of Hindus in Russia.

"Bhagavad Gita As It Is" is a translation and commentary of the original Bhagavad Gita Hindu scripture. It was written by International Society for Krishna Consciousness founder A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada. The book has been translated into over 60 languages.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Lukashevich said the translation may be linguistically untrue to the original scripture, as it contains "semantic distortions" that could obscure its meaning.