Man detained for hurling shoe at BJP leader

A man on Thursday was detained by the police for hurling a shoe at Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) spokesperson and Rajya Sabha MP G.V.L. Narasimha Rao when the latter was addressing a press conference about Malegaon blast accused Sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur joining the BJP, at the party's national headquarters here.

The shoe narrowly missed the BJP leader and hit a mic.

Incidentally, the shoe came flying towards Rao just when he was attacking the Congress for opposing the nomination of Sadhvi Pragya as BJP's Lok Sabha candidate from Bhopal, saying that there were no charges against her.

BJP workers caught hold of the man before he was detained by the police. He later identified himself as Shakti Bhargava, a Kanpur-based doctor.

"Shakti Bhargava, who has been detained, told interrogators that he recently met with a huge property loss and wanted media attention for which he attacked the BJP leader," a senior police officer said, adding that the person was being interrogated by the special cell of Delhi Police.

A lookup of Bhargava's Facebook page showed him to be a vocal critic of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. He also claims to be a "whistleblower" in many of his posts.

--IANS

sp/arm