Amid mounting criticism against Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav for not initiating action against a close relative who had publicly slapped a woman lecturer about a week ago, the city police on Sunday finally arrested the accused youth and produced him in the court, which remanded him in judicial custody.
Abhinav Gupta, who is the nephew of Sadhana Gupta, wife of SP chief Mulayam Singh Yadav, had slapped his teacher Archana Shukla -- lecturer at the Amity University here -- in front of her students and college staff.
Besides, Abhinav is politically well-heeled in his own right as he is son of Pramod Gupta, the SP MLA from the Yadav clan’s home constituency of Etawah.
The outrageous incident had created an uproar here with the teaching community and the students of almost all the educational institutions demanding strict action against the accused, whose proximity to the ‘powers-be’ has been common knowledge.
After the incident threatened to snowball into a major controversy, Akhilesh had personally called up Shukla and and assured her that action would indeed be taken against the accused.
Abhinav had been harassing Shukla for nearly a year through the social websites and in person and the matter was reported to the authorities concerned in the university by the lecturer, but no action was taken as the student belonged to the state’s powerful political family.
Although the police tried to delay taking action in the case for as long as possible, finally it acted to check the criticism against the SP Government.
Meanwhile, this is not the only incident of its kind in which the high and the mighty associated with the ruling party have brazenly defied the law.There have been several incidents of manhandling and thrashing of the government officials, land grabbing and incidents of public misbehaviour by the SP members all over the state.