Hyderabad: BJP MLA Raja Singh alleges injury in lathicharge; police say not true

BJP MLA Raja Singh inflicted injuries on himself and threatened the police after members of BJP attempted to erect the statue of Rani Avantibai Lodhi here in the early hours of Thursday, police said today.

The MLA, however, has blamed police for lathi charging him and his followers after they questioned him when he was replacing an old Rani Avantibai Lodhi statue in Jumeerat Bazar with a new one.

The statue of Rani Avantibai Lodhi statue who fought in the 1857 war of independence was established at Jummerath bazar in 2009 and was replaced twice before because of some damages.

In a video clip of the incident that has gone viral on the Internet, the BJP MLA is seen picking up a stone and hit himself on his head and then threatening policemen that he would kill himself if they attempted to stop him.

Singh's followers, however, claimed that the Hyderabad city police had launched a lathicharge on them due to which BJP MLA got injured.

AR Srinivas, DCP West Zone, Hyderabad, speaking to ANI said, "Raja Singh and his followers tried to replace the statue of Rani Avanti Bai with a new one. The old was around 10-11 feet and the new one is around 20 feet."

"When police were informed about the situation, police reached there and asked them to show the permission letter from the GHMC in order to change the statue. Now without any permission, installation of any statue becomes illegal. So we opposed the act and tried to stop them for which they pushed the police officers and manhandled them. Due to this pushing few of our policemen were slightly injured," the senior police officer said.

An FIR has been registered on this incident and the investigation is under process. Section 143, 145, 147, 353, 153 clause 2 have been imposed on the persons involved in the incident.