- Friday, April 26, 2024
By: Shubham Ghosh
INDIAN National Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, who is expected to play a major role in her party’s campaign in next year’s election in Uttar Pradesh – India’s most crucial political state – was detained on Sunday (3) when she was on her way to Lakhimpur Kheri after violence broke out there to meet the victims’ kin.
Dramatic videos surfaced on social media showing Vadra’s confrontation with the police personnel in UP. On Monday, her team released another video and it went viral in no time.
In the video, Vadra, whose father, grandmother and great grandfather have all been prime ministers of India, was seen sweeping the floor of a state guest house in Sitapur (around 29 miles from Lakhimpur) where she was kept detained.
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Vadra, 49, later told Indian news channel NDTV: “That was my room. I like to keep my room clean.” A member of her team told the channel that the room where Vadra was kept was dirty and she cleaned it herself.
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Supporters of the Congress gathered outside the guest house to protest her detention. They also accused the police of using physical force against Vadra and Deepender Hooda, a parliamentarian who was also stopped from reaching the site.
Vadra confronted the police on Sunday asking them to produce a warrant after the personnel surrounded her convoy. She said, “I am not important than the people you have killed. The government you are defending. You give me a legal warrant, a legal basis or else I will not move from here and you won’t touch me.”
She even told the officer that if she was forcibly put into the police car, she would charge the former with kidnapping her. Hooda, who was with her, was also allegedly manhandled.
Eight people, including four farmers, were killed in the violence after a car of a convoy allegedly hit the protesters and the farmers said the son of India’s junior home minister Ajay Mishra was in the car. The charge was denied.
