Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi was on Thursday prevented from taking part in a candlelight march to India Gate and detained by the Delhi Police. The march, organised by the Delhi unit of the Congress in protest against the suicide of an ex-serviceman over one rank, one pension (OROP), comes a day after Mr. Gandhi was detained twice for trying to meet the bereaved family.
Mr. Gandhi was leading the march, which began from Jantar Mantar, when the Delhi Police personnel took him away in a van. He was taken to Feroze Shah Road, where he was made to sit inside a vehicle.
“Was detained by Delhi Police and taken away from Jantar Mantar,” Mr. Gandhi tweeted. Later he tweeted that the “police vehicle stopped at 5 Firozeshah Road, en route Tughlak Road PS.”
“They are not taking me to police station and not saying anything either. I am sitting here and I have been told that I have been removed [from Jantar Mantar] due to Section 144,” Mr. Gandhi told reporters.
He said the way the family of the deceased was ‘dragged’, cursed and manhandled at the police station was not right. “For our Army standing at the border, their morale will be affected. They should be respected,” he said. For the behaviour meted out to the family of the deceased, the Central government ‘should say sorry,’ he said.
“The Delhi Police have abducted Rahul Gandhi and taken him where? We are trying to lodge a complaint; It’s worse than emergency,” Congress leader Jitendra Singh told reporters. Mr. Singh later went to submit a complaint stating that confinement of Mr. Gandhi amounted to abduction but the police refused to accept it.
“He was not detained, it was to ensure his safety as a frenzied mob was behind him. He was not taken to any police station but was secured in a police vehicle at the venue itself,” a senior police official told The Hindu . “The decision was taken in consultation with the SPG which guards him,” he said.
Stage sit-inAfter being kept stranded for nearly an hour at Feroze Shah Road, Mr. Gandhi was taken to the Tughlaq Road police station, where supporters of Mr. Gandhi protested against the Central government and staged a sit-in. Around 9 p.m., Mr. Gandhi emerged from the police station and tried to give a complaint in the police station, but the ‘police said we can’t accept it.”
“If they can’t accept the complaint of an MP, how will they accept the complaint of a poor person then?” the Congress leader told reporters.
On Wednesday, Mr. Gandhi was detained twice.
