In a major embarrassment for the Congress, four of its workers, including former party president Rahul Gandhi’s staff, were on Friday arrested for allegedly vandalising a picture of Mahatma Gandhi in the Wayanad MP’s office.
The incident had occurred on June 24 after which the Congress had claimed that workers of the SFI were responsible. “Four Congress workers, including MP Rahul’s staff, have been arrested for vandalising a picture of Mahatma Gandhi in his Wayanad office,” said a police official. Those arrested are V Noushad, K A Mujeeb, S R Rahul and K R Ratheesh Kumar. Kumar is Rahul’s office assistant. Following the incident, several videos went viral on social media that showed angry SFI protesters entering Rahul’s office and a heated altercation that ensued. Visuals of protestors, allegedly belonging to the Students’ Federation of India (SFI), the student’s wing of the ruling CPI(M), entering the office of Congress leader Rahul also went viral on social media.
Rahul, who reached Wayanad on July 1, had also visited the office at Kalpetta later.“This is my office. But before being my office, this is the office of the people of Wayanad. It is quite unfortunate that the office has been attacked.
“Violence will never resolve problems. It is not good that they have acted in an irresponsible manner. I don’t have any anger or hostility towards them. They are kids and they don’t understand the consequences of their act,” he said without referring to either SFI or CPI(M).
The Kerala police had said that a protest march of around 100 SFI activists was on and they barged into the office. They also confirmed that eight of the violent protesters were taken into custody. On July 2, Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan had told the Assembly that police had removed all SFI men who had stormed into the MP office by around 3.54 pm. When a police photographer clicked photos of the crime scene, the Gandhi picture on the wall was intact.
Congress activists were inside the office after the SFI workers were removed and later in the evening, when the police photographer took photos of the crime scene again, the portrait was found lying on the floor in a damaged condition, Vijayan claimed and cited the photographer’s statement to the police.