Bhopal/Narsinghpur, Nov 22 In a development highlighting the ongoing tensions over allegations of electoral irregularities in the recently concluded Bihar Assembly elections, a local Congress worker Manjeet Ghoshi was arrested from his village in Madhya Pradesh’s Narsinghpur district in the wee hours of Saturday, leading to protests by party workers.
A joint team of Delhi and Rajasthan Police detained Ghoshi from his home in the Tendukheda area early in the morning and took him to Delhi for interrogation.
According to police sources, the arrest stemmed from a social media post on platform X in which Ghoshi shared an old video of a protest rally in Rajasthan, falsely presenting it as evidence of public outrage in Bihar over alleged “vote chori (vote theft)" by the BJP-led NDA following its landslide victory earlier this month.
Reacting sharply to the arrest, senior Congress leader and former Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Kamal Nath's office posted on X (in Hindi), that the filing of FIRs against Manjeet Ghoshi (@ghoshi_manjeet) in Delhi and Rajasthan merely for raising concerns about electoral malpractice, followed by his arrest in this manner, is deeply condemnable."
“I call upon Congress workers in Narsinghpur to extend every possible support and assistance to Manjeet during this difficult time. I also urge the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) not to misuse its authority to suppress freedom of expression. Let the BJP and the Election Commission be clearly warned: Every Congress worker is resolute in their commitment to prevent any form of vote theft or electoral fraud. No amount of state oppression or intimidation will deter us from this duty,” the senior Congress leader wrote.
The arrest triggered immediate backlash from the Congress party. District Congress President and former MLA Sunita Patel led a two-hour protest outside the local Superintendent of Police’s office, questioning what she called selective targeting.
Speaking to IANS, she said: “We discussed the matter with the Superintendent of Police, Narsinghpur, but they neither provided a copy of the FIR nor informed us of the exact charges on which he was arrested and taken away by Delhi and Rajasthan Police. The SP has told us that the precise reasons will be shared once the investigation is complete. Thousands of people post about elections every day — why only our worker? This reeks of political vendetta aimed at suppressing dissent over Bihar’s controversial results.”
Patel vowed larger agitations if required. Prima facie, if sources are believed, the post, shared days after the Bihar results were declared, reportedly violated sections related to spreading false information and inciting communal or electoral discord, leading to FIRs being registered in multiple states.
Narsinghpur Additional Superintendent of Police Sandeep Bhuria confirmed that the action was taken on the basis of legal complaints and described it as a routine inter-state matter.
Ghoshi’s family expressed shock, with his brother Laxmikant stating that no prior notice was given.
“The police arrived suddenly and took him away. We still don’t know the exact charges,” he told reporters.
Congress sources said the party would pursue legal remedies against the police action in Delhi.
The NDA secured over 200 seats in the 243-member Bihar Assembly. Opposition claims of voter-list manipulations and EVM tampering have been widely debunked by the Election Commission and independent fact-checkers.
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