BHOPAL: A Congress leader, who is accused of leading a mob that attacked a police station in Madhya Pradesh’s Chhatarpur district on August 21, was arrested on Tuesday.
Haji Shahzad Ali, the former Chhatarpur district Congress vice-president, was arrested from near the Chhatarpur traffic police station on Tuesday.
According to informed sources privy to the ongoing investigations in the case, Ali was planning to surrender before a local court, but before he could execute his plan, the police, acting on specific inputs, arrested him.
Unable to track him since the incident, the Chhatarpur district police had declared a bounty of Rs 10,000 on his arrest and also issued a lookout notice for him recently.
On August 22, the local administration and police had also demolished Ali’s palatial house and bulldozed high-end vehicles parked in the same premises. As per the Chhatarpur district administration, the house was illegally constructed and repetitive notices and a speaking order had been issued against it by the local municipality in the past.
While confirming Ali’s arrest, the Chhatarpur district police superintendent Agam Jain told The New Indian Express that besides the case registered on August 21, Ali had been accused in at least five more cases in the past, including a case of murder and multiple cases of criminal assaults. With Ali’s arrest, now 37 named accused have been arrested in the August 21 case, which includes a total of 90-plus identified accused.
According to official sources, Ali’s arrest had emboldened some individuals of Chhatarpur district to inform the police about grabbing of their land by Ali and his aides in the past. Some of them may come forward to lodge cases against him and his aides in the coming days.
The bulldozing of Ali’s palatial house and vehicles parked outside it on August 22 was condemned by various opposition leaders including Congress national general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra and AIMIM chief Asaduddin Owaisi.
On August 21, a mob led by Ali gathered outside the Chhatarpur Kotwali police station in Chhatarpur district of MP to protest the alleged statements made by Mahant Ramgiri Maharaj against Prophet Mohammad and Islam in Nashik in Maharashtra. The mob suddenly turned violent and attacked the police station with stones, injuring cops including the police station in-charge Arvind Kujur and a woman journalist Kalpana Yadav.
While on the run in the August 21 attempt to murder and rioting case, Ali had claimed in a video message that he had not led or incited the mob to attack the police station and on the contrary he had tried to prevent it. It was some anti-social elements intruding into the mob, who actually indulged in violence, he said.
