An undergraduate student in Amravati has alleged that Maharashtra Education Minister Vinod Tawde ordered his arrest when he was recording a conversation between him and a fellow student, a charge denied by the Minister.

The student, Yuvraj Dabad, also claimed that after the alleged order, the local police detained him for a couple of hours, seized his smartphone and returned it after deleting the video-recording.

Mr. Tawde, however, refuted the allegation, saying “lies” were being spread against him. “Some students distributed pamphlets with ‘Inquilab Zindabad’ written on them. They were the ones who made this claim. It is completely false,” Mr. Tawde said.

Amravati Police Commissioner Sanjay Kumar Baviskar said the student was neither arrested nor detained, and nothing was deleted from his phone. “In the midst of chaos in the college, he was taken outside the college,” he said.

The alleged incident took place on Friday after Mr. Tawde inaugurated an elocution competition at a college in Amravati. The Minister was leaving after his speech when some student journalists approached him near his vehicle, seeking his response on a free education policy.

Prashant Rathod, a student, said, “I asked Mr. Tawde whether the State could have a free education policy and he told me to start working somewhere if I could not afford the educational expenses.”

Mr. Dabad was video-recording the interaction, when the Minister “first asked him to stop the recording and later ordered the police to arrest him,” Mr. Rathod said.

Mr. Dabad said he declined the Minister’s order to stop the recording because “he [Mr. Tawde] was not answering our queries.”

Mr. Dabad said he had submitted a letter to the police commissionerate in Amravati and the district collectorate on Saturday against Mr. Tawde and police officials.