India Against Corruption (IAC) member Arvind Kejriwal and his supporters
were Friday detained while protesting alleged irregularities in a NGO
run by Law Minister Salman Khurshid and his wife Louise. Taken to a
stadium on the outskirts of Delhi, they refused to leave even after
being later released by the police.
Police swooped on around 150
IAC members, including a group of disabled people from Rashtriya Viklang
Party, when the protesters were on Rajpath, about a kilometre from
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's 7 Race Course Road residence.
The
crowd was headed towards the prime minister's residence demanding
Khurshid's dismissal from the cabinet over alleged misuse of funds
sanctioned for buying equipment for disabled people in different parts
of Uttar Pradesh.
Rashtriya Viklang Party president K.K. Dixit,
who was among the protesters, alleged that the NGO run by Khurshid's
wife had not properly utilised the funds allocated to it for welfare of
the differently abled.
"Khurshid and his wife's Dr. Zakir
Hussain Memorial Trust were allotted Rs.71 lakh to provide cycle
rickshaws to the differently-abled in Uttar Pradesh's 16 districts. But
they misused the funds as per an RTI," he alleged.
Khurshid has denied the charge.
As
the protesters were moving towards the PM's house, four companies of
Delhi Police swung into action, detaining and putting the protesters
into Delhi Transport Corporation (DTC) buses for taking them to
Parliament Street police station.
"Only five members can be taken
to the prime minister's residence, not everybody," a senior police
officer told Kejriwal but he did not agree to the proposal. The IAC had
said earlier that the prime minister had refused to meet Kejriwal.
The
bus carrying Kejriwal was stopped near Gol Dak Khana in central Delhi
by his supporters. Police then separated Kejriwal and took him to a
stadium in Bawana in a police van. His supporters were detained in the
police station.
"We will remain in jail and we will not come out," Kejriwal said from the bus.
A
complaint of manhandling levelled by some women protesters against
female police personnel resulted in senior officials ordering the police
personnel to remove their name plates from their uniforms.
Kejriwal said he wanted to submit a letter to the prime minister detailing his allegations against Khurshid.
"A
police complaint should be filed immediately against Salman Khurshid
and his wife. Khurshid should be removed from the cabinet till proven
innocent. Both are influential people, they can tamper with evidence and
pressure witnesses. They should be arrested," he said.
Police
announced in the evening that IAC activists had been released from
detention but Kejriwal decided to not leave the makeshift jail at
Bawana.
IAC said in a statement that Kejriwal and other IAC
activists have decided not to leave Bawana to press with their demand
for Khurshid's removal from his post.
The statement said
Kejriwal had told the gathering that the "law minister had insulted the
high office and he is supposed to uphold. Both the minister and his wife
are influential people and they can tamper with the evidence".
Kerjriwal
also said it was shame that the government was using force to "muzzle
the voice of disabled people" rather than listen to them and take
decisive action and uphold the law.
IAC said protests were
observed in many cities including Farukkhabad (in Salman Khurshid's
constituency), Lucknow, Amritsar, Patna, Bhopal, Dehradun, Indore,
Jaipur, Raipur, Ludhiana, Bangalore, Mumbai and Chennai on the issue.
