Police in Bihar’s Darbhanga on Friday arrested a man for allegedly using abusive language against Prime Minister Narendra Modi at an event on Wednesday during the Opposition’s Voter Adhikar Yatra at Bithauli village.
The arrested man, identified as Mohammed Rizwi, is a resident of Bhopura village under the Jale Assembly constituency.
Supporters of local Congress leader Mohammed Naushad Alam organised an event and raised a stage in Bithauli as Leader of Opposition in Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi passed through the village as part of the yatra. However, neither Rahul Gandhi nor any other Opposition leader in the yatra addressed the crowd at the village.
According to police, Rizwi played a key role in mobilising the crowd for the event. A Darbhanga police source said, “As businessman Naushad Alam lived mostly outside Bihar, Rizwi looks after Alam’s political engagements in Darbhanga. A purported video showed that the defamatory slogan was raised from the stage.”
The purported video of a person abusing Modi from the stage on Wednesday had drawn sharp criticism from the ruling NDA.
Union Home Minister Amit Shah had said the use of “abusive language filled with expletives” against the Prime Minister was not only condemnable but also a “stain on our democracy”. “Under Rahul Gandhi’s leadership, Congress politics has reached its lowest level. They cannot tolerate how a poor mother’s son has been sitting in the Prime Minister’s chair for the past 11 years and is continuously taking the country forward under his leadership,” Shah said in a post on X.
In the 2020 Bihar Assembly elections, the Congress had fielded M Usmani from Jale. Usmani had lost to the BJP’s Jiwesh Mishra, currently a minister. Naushad Alam, who has been expecting a Congress ticket from Jale, had clashed with Usmani and his supporters three days ago over their show of strength during Rahul Gandhi’s yatra.
