Lucknow: A Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) worker, accused of assaulting a Dalit government official working in the state power department, received a rousing welcome by party members and family after the Allahabad High Court granted him bail.
A video of BJP worker Munna Bahadur being garlanded by his supporters upon his release from Mau district jail went viral on social media.
On August 23, Munna Bahadur allegedly attacked Lal Singh, a superintending engineer with the Uttar Pradesh Power Corporation Limited.
The assault was captured on video, showing the Dalit surrounded by a group led by Munna Bahadur. During the conversation, the BJP worker gets up and attacks the former with his slipper.
Speaking to local media, Lal Singh claimed that the attack was unprovoked.
“Generally, people come to meet us at the office to report problems, but Munna Bahadur came with 15-20 people and, without any question, began verbally abusing me. He didn’t even tell me his complaint; he just started hitting me with his shoes. He also punched me. My coworkers intervened and rescued me from the assault. He never mentioned a reason, just began assaulting,” the engineer said.
When asked if Munna Bahadur had come to raise concerns over an electricity issue, Lal Singh maintained the former had not once mentioned an electricity problem.
After the assault went viral and received massive uproar, Singh told reporters that he was the real victim of the incident.
“We have been suffering with this problem for 17 years. We were just informing them of our grievances with the electricity issue. However, they accused us of netagiri (politicking) and asked us to leave,” said the BJP worker at the time.
He claimed the situation soon escalated after one of the officers grabbed his collar.
Following Lal Singh’s complaint, a case was registered, and Singh was sent to jail.
Even before his release, several BJP leaders had publicly expressed support for the accused. Former BJP MLA Ram Iqbal Singh claimed in a Facebook post that Munna Bahadur Singh had visited the power department to raise concerns about electricity supply issues affecting dozens of villages and was “falsely implicated” in the case. He also welcomed the High Court’s decision to grant bail.
