In what may appear to be a scene straight out of a daily soap, a Bharatiya Janata Party MLA on Wednesday, 7 April, charged out of the Pratapgarh District Magistrate’s office with a torn kurta in his hand and lay flat on the ground, claiming that he had been beaten up by the district’s police chief over anomalies in the voters’ list.
In videos that have gone viral on social media, MLA Abhay Kumar – popularly known as Dheeraj Ojha – accused Superintendent of Police Akash Tomar of assaulting him for no fault of his.
“The Superintendent of Police has assaulted an MLA. I had done nothing wrong. A dangerous man has come. He will get me killed,” Kumar can be hard saying.
While the MLA claimed that he had been manhandled when he had tried to raise the issue of names missing from the voters’ list for upcoming panchayat elections, the SP refuted the allegation.
Police Officer Rubbishes Claims
Issuing a statement after the incident, Tomar said that all allegations levelled by the MLA against him were false and that he had only asked Kumar to stop misbehaving with the District Magistrate.
“The MLA, Dheeraj Ojha, sat on a dharna at the residence of the Pratapgarh district magistrate. When I asked him not to misbehave, he made the false allegations against me. The DM was present with me at all times. The police had nothing to do with these events," the SP said in his statement.
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