Prayagraj, 07 Sept (HS): Uttar Pradesh Congress Committee President Ajay Rai was forcibly arrested by police in Lucknow while en route to Saharanpur before leaving to protest the demolition of a 120-year-old mosque in the Saharanpur Collectorate complex. In protest, the City Congress Committee and the District Congress Committee of Kaushambi, led by City President Fuzail Hashmi, staged a sit-in at the Civil Lines protest site.

During the protest, the State President demanded Rai's release and condemned the Yogi government, stating that protest is the opposition's right in a democracy. Rai was arrested before he could leave to assess the situation at the Saharanpur mosque demolition, which represents a dictatorship by the Yogi government. The arrest and detention of numerous Congress and Samajwadi Party leaders over the issue and their subsequent detention at an undisclosed location is worse than the Emergency. The mosque demolition is a shameful incident that reflects the politics of hatred and division, destroying social fabric and mutual brotherhood.

Gaurav Pandey, Kishore Varshney, Harikesh Tripathi, Vijay Mishra, Vinay Dubey, Parvez Ansari, Rajesh Rakesh, Tabrez Ahmed, Anoop Tripathi, Sushmita Yadav, Afroz Ahmed, Kameshwar Sonkar, Manas Shukla, Ram Manorath Saroj, Nafees Qureshi, Shashi Prakash, Mukhtar Ahmed, Rajesh Sahni, Raju Khan, Jitendra Sonkar, Sachin Pandey etc. were present.

Hindusthan Samachar / Abhishek Awasthi