Mumbai | An undergraduate student in Maharashtra’s Amravati district has alleged that state Education Minister Vinod Tawde ordered his arrest when he was recording a conversation between him and a fellow student.
The student, Yuvraj Dabad, further claimed that following the alleged order, the local police detained him for a couple of hours, seized his smartphone and returned it later. The alleged incident took place after Tawde inaugurated an elocution competition at a college in Amravati on Saturday.
The minister was leaving after his speech at the event, when some students of a journalism course reached out to him near his vehicle, seeking his response on a free-education policy.
Prashant Rathod, a student at the college, said, “I was told by Education Minister Vinod Tawde to start working somewhere if I could not afford the educational expenses. My question to him was whether the state could have a free-education policy.”
Dabad was video-recording the interaction, when the minister “first asked him to stop the recording and later asked the police to arrest him”, Rathod claimed while talking to reporters in Amravati on Saturday.
Dabad said he declined the minister’s order to stop the recording because “he (Tawde) was not answering our queries”. “We were simply asking questions to him and seeking his views,” he told reporters.
“As Tawde ordered the police to arrest me, I was taken out of the college premises and detained for some time. My handset was returned after a couple of hours,” Dabad said. Despite several attempts, the minister could not be reached for a comment.
As an independent media platform, we do not take advertisements from governments and corporate houses. It is you, our readers, who have supported us on our journey to do honest and unbiased journalism. Please contribute, so that we can continue to do the same in future.
