Four persons were arrested on Friday on the charge of damaging a picture of Mahatma Gandhi in the office of Congress MP Rahul Gandhi here during an attack allegedly by a group of Student Federation of India (SFI) activists nearly two months ago.
Those arrested were identified as K.R. Ratheesh Kumar, personal assistant of Mr. Gandhi, S.R. Rahul, an office staff, V .Noushad and K. Mujeeb, Congress workers.
The office was vandalised allegedly by a group of SFI activists following a march on June 24. The Communist Party of India (Marxist) had alleged that the students were not responsible for destroying the picture as it was intact immediately after the attack.
But the Congress had alleged that the picture was damaged by SFI activists when they vandalised the office .
Meanwhile, a group of Congress leaders, led by T. Siddique and I.C. Balakrishnan, MLAs, staged a sit-in in front of the office of the Kalpetta DySP seeking reinvestigation of the case and the reason for arresting Congress workers. They staged the protest after the police granted bail to the accused.
Kerala Pradesh Congress Committee president K. Sudhakaran termed the arrests a political conspiracy instigated from the office of the Chief Minister. Pinarayi Vijayan should explain the evidence that led to the arrest of innocent party workers. Mr. Vijayan had announced that the culprits were Congress workers even before the police had started investigation.
He said the government was trying to protect the SFI activists who had vandalised the office.
Mr. Siddique, who is also the KPCC working president, alleged that the arrests were made even before inspecting CCTV visuals of the office.
