Maharashtra Minister of Energy Dr Nitin Raut on Thursday was detained by UP Police at border of Azamgarh district. Raut, who is the chairman of the All India Congress Committee's Scheduled Cast Department, was prohibited when he was on his way to join the Congress delegation which was to meet the family of Dalit Sarpanch Satyamev Jayate who had been shot dead last week.
Raut in a tweet said, “I am neither emotionally charged nor my morale is dented due to undemocratic treatment meted out to me and my party colleagues by the UP Police. To be candid, we never expected the Yogi Adityanath government to be hospitable.”
Raut has called the incident ‘gruesome’ and has voiced concern over the law and order situation in Uttar Pradesh and the growing attacks on Dalits. “There is no trace of any democratic rights or values left in UP is a clear takeaway from what I experienced today. And this coincides with the birth anniversary of late Rajiv Gandhi who strengthened the Panchayat Raj and empowered villages in India is something I will never be able to put behind,” he noted.
Raut marched on foot towards the Bansgaon village of Azamgarh. But the cops further stopped and detained him. The delegation, which included UPCC chief Ajay Kumar Lallu and senior congress leader PL Punia, had been detained earlier in the day. “I walked around 2.5 km when policemen came in vehicles along with my car. They asked me to sit in my car and then cordoned off my car and forcibly took me to the government guest house. I was not allowed to meet the family. Hence, I returned to Varanasi and now I am back to Nagpur,” Raut told FPJ.
Condemning the Yogi government’s treatment meted out to him, Raut said, “I had shared my program with the government. Yet, I was treated like this. This shows how brazenly the Yogi government violates the constitution.”
He further stated that under the Yogi government crimes against Dalits, STs, OBCs and women have surged in UP. Raut said that his party had extended Rs 1 lakh help to the slain Pradhan Satyamev Jayte’s family and the same amount to the family of the boy who was crushed under wheels during a protest held after Jayte’s death.
Other Congress leaders detained by the police were released later in the evening.
