Congress workers held with booze

AHMEDABAD: Police on Monday afternoon arrested two Youth Congress workers, after a liquor bottle was allegedly found in their two-wheeler glovebox, near Kochrab Ashram in Paldi, when they were protesting the recent lionizing re-enactment by the Hindu Mahasabha leaders of the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi. Another Congress worker was held later as the vehicle from which the liquor was allegedly found belonged to him.

According to the FIR registered at Ellisbridge police station, the two Congress workers initially held were Anil Verma (37), a resident of Amraiwadi and the Amraiwadi ward Youth Congress in-charge; and Ejazkhan Pathan (32), the Youth Congress in-charge of the Vejalpur ward and a resident of Maktampura. The owner of the vehicle was Congress party member Sameer Dave.

“On Monday afternoon, when senior Congress leaders including Gujarat unit president Amit Chavda gathered at Kochrab Ashram to protest the re-enactment of Mahatma Gandhi’s assassination by Nathuram Godse, Verma and Pathan took out an effigy to burn as a part of protest. When they were taking out clothes to put on the effigy, a cop saw a liquor bottle in the glovebox of the two-wheeler,” said a police official.

When police inquired about the two-wheeler, they said that neither the two-wheeler nor the bottle belonged to them. They said the liquor belonged to Dave and he had kept the bottle in the two-wheeler. Police then conducted an inquiry against Dave and booked all three of them for violation of prohibition laws, the official added.

Shashikant Patel, the Ahmedabad in-charge of the Congress, said Pathan and Verma were booked even after Dave said that the bottle belonged to him. “Verma and Pathan are active in the party but I have never seen Dave at any of the party’s activities. This may be some kind of ploy to malign the party,” said Patel.

Congress workers had gathered to protest after the Hindu Mahasabha’s national secretary, Puja Shakun Pandey, had on January 30 “shot” an effigy of Mahatma Gandhi and filmed it. Uttar Pradesh police had registered a case against Pandey after the video clip went viral on social media. Gandhi’s assassin, Nathuram Godse, was also a member of the Hindu Mahasabha.