Jailed for dissent: Distraught daughter of Manmohan Mishra says father is heart patient

CHENNAI: Manmohan Mishra’s teary-eyed meeting with his daughter after three long years lasted all of 10 minutes, under the watchful glare of four police personnel from Uttar Pradesh, and amid the din of a railway station in Madhya Pradesh.

The 62-year-old, arrested by UP police in Chennai for uploading a YouTube video critical of the Union government’s handling of the Covid crisis, met his daughter for a brief while on Sunday as the train chugged into a station in Madhya Pradesh, on the way to UP.  

Manmohan has been living for decades in Chennai, but is seemingly popular in his home state for his political videos. While his own YouTube channel is not popular, his videos posted in other channels have been popular in the northern State. 

Speaking about her emotional meeting with her dad, his daughter who did not wish to be named said, “I could not even hug my father. We cried for sometime and my father told me not to worry and that he is being jailed for speaking the truth. My father has heart problems. He suffered a heart attack a few years ago. So I asked him not to get stressed as it might affect him,” said the daughter.

“In a recent video, my father had spoken about oxygen shortage in the country and how the Union government was incompetent in addressing the issue. The video has since been removed from social media. It is for this video that the police have arrested him,” she said, quoting his lawyer. Manmohan was produced before a Jaunpur court by the district police on Monday; he was remanded in judicial custody for two days. 

‘Manmohan runs a charity’
Manmohan’s daughter also told Express: “My father runs a charity trust that feeds hundreds of people in Uttar Pradesh and Tamil Nadu.”

‘Unscientific information’
Ajay Kumar Sahni, Superintendent of Police, Jaunpur, Uttar Pradesh, told reporters there on Monday, “Mishra had uploaded a video on social media which contained baseless and unscientific information about Covid. The video was going viral. Anticipating that the video could create panic among people, Kotwali police took suo motu cognizance of the matter.”

(Inputs from Lucknow)