Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Bhupesh Baghel’s father was on Tuesday arrested by the Raipur Police for allegedly making derogatory comments about the Brahmin community, ANI reported.
The police produced 86-year-old Nand Kumar Baghel before a court in Raipur, which sent him to judicial custody for 15 days, Bar and Bench reported.
At an event in Uttar Pradesh in August, Nand Kumar Baghel had reportedly urged the audience to boycott the Brahmin community.
“I am urging all the villagers of India to not let the Brahmins enter your villages,” he had reportedly said. “I will talk to every other community so that we can boycott them. They need to send back to the bank of the [Russian] Volga river.”
The police had filed a first information report against the Chhattisgarh chief minister’s father on Sunday, based on a complaint from Sarv Brahmin Samaj, a Brahmin organisation.
The 86-year-old was booked under Sections 153-A (promoting enmity between different groups) and 505(1)(b) (intent to cause, fear or alarm to public) of the Indian Penal Code.
Bhupesh Baghel had criticised his father’s comments and said that nobody was above the law.
“Everyone knows about my ideological differences with my father,” the chief minister had said. “The comments have hurt the sentiments of the [Brahmin] class as well as social harmony and I am also pained by it.”
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