After days of high drama, keeping police on tenterhooks and State BJP top brass red-faced, Gadarpur MlA Arvind Pandey was finally arrested on Monday while he was supposedly on his way to Rudrapur Court to surrender. He was sent to 14 days’ judicial custody after he was presented in the court, Rudrapur.
Giving details, Udham Singh Nagar additional SP Kamlesh Upadhyay said that Pandey had been arrested in connection with the case registered against him along with his dozen followers of allegedly assaulting Gadarpur Nayab Tehsildar Sher Singh in Udham Singh Nagar on August 25.
The MlA went underground since the day a case was registered against him in Rudrapur police station. Pandey did not act on an announcement made earlier that he along with his supporters would surrender before police at Parade Ground, Udham Singh Nagar on August 28. Even the Mahapanchayat fixing August 4 as the day of his surrender proved a fiasco.
ASP Upadhyay had said on Friday that Pandey was likely to surrender before the court on Monday. In view of this, additional forces were deployed at Court campus in Rudapur by the district police to ensure law and order during the proposed surrender, she added.
Police arrested the MlA around half a kilometer away from the Rudrapur Police Station as accompanied by hundreds of supporters, he was supposedly on his way to the Court to surrender.
On September 4, Dehradun police had launched raids hither and thither, tipped that the MlA was hiding himself somewhere in the city. Vehicle checking drives were undertaken too. However, such initiatives came a cropper with the MlA’s whereabouts remaining a mystery.
However, with the drama unfolding, a State BJP delegation comprising senior leaders like former Chief Minister Ramesh Pokhriyal Nishank and leader of the Opposition in the Vidhan Sabha Ajay Bhatt had met the Chief Minister Harish Rawat at the latter’s residence late last week and sought CB-CID inquiry into the alleged misbehaviour of Nayab Tehsildar by MlA Pandey. However, how CM reacted was not, however, known.