Agar Malwa, Madhya Pradesh: The BJP government in Madhya Pradesh found itself in an embarrassing situation when one of its own MLAs was seen downing shutters in Agar town during Monday’s Bharat bandh protests.
A video of MLA Gopal Parmar forcing a couple to shut their shop in the town during the bandh had gone viral in the state on Monday.
In the video, the BJP lawmaker Parmar, along with his supporters, is seen forcing a couple shut their shop against their will.
Parmar is seen asking the shop owner to down the shutters for at least five minutes even as the shopkeeper’s wife watches helplessly with her daughter crying in her lap.
(Parmar seen with his supporters threatening people to down shutters)
(Gopal Parmar overseeing the downing of shutters as seen in the video clip)
Interestingly, the cops standing nearby are spectators to the goings on. However, when the cops, finally, decided to intervene, the MLA was forced to leave.
Thereafter, Parmar was not available for comments. BJP’s spokesperson Deepak Vijayvargiya said, “We will have to see if the MLA did it with bad intent.”
Sources say, the MLA was accompanying protesters during the bandh.
“The video has only exposed who was behind the violence. The police should also probe the role of other BJP leaders in the bandh,” Congress spokesperson Pankaj Chaturvedi said.
Six persons were killed in Madhya Pradesh, two in uttar Pradesh and one in Rajasthan as Dalit groups staged violent protests across north India against a Supreme Court judgment they claimed weakened protections available to the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes.
The SC had ruled on March 20 that the anti-atrocities law had become an instrument to harass innocent citizens and had issued a slew of guidelines against arbitrary arrests.
The death toll in the Madhya Pradesh has risen to seven.
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