Social activist Agnivesh was assaulted near the Bharatiya Janata Party headquarters in New Delhi on Friday afternoon, reported NDTV. The incident took place when the 79-year-old activist, also an Arya Samaj leader, was on his way to pay tributes to former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee.

In a video, a group of people can be seen chasing Agnivesh down the road. He is pushed aside while a woman is seen raising her slipper at him. The BJP office is located on the Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Marg.

The police took Agnivesh into a van and moved him to safety. “I had gone to pay my respects to Vajpayeeji,” he told NDTV. “Because of the police pickets, I had to walk down the last stretch... suddenly a group of people came and attacked us. There were two-three of us and they were quite a few. They beat us, pushed us around, abused us and knocked off my turban. They kept shouting ‘he’s a traitor, he’s a traitor, beat him’.”

This is the second time in a month that Agnivesh has been attacked. On July 17, he was beaten up allegedly by workers of the Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha and the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad in Jharkhand. The BJP had distanced itself from the incident after the attack on the activist, and denied that its workers were responsible.

In 2011, religious leader Nityanand Das had assaulted Agnivesh at a public meeting over his comments on the Amarnath Yatra.