Magsaysay awardee Sandeep Pandey was on Monday “arrested” by the Uttar Pradesh police while distributing pamphlets against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA) and the proposed nationwide National Register of Citizens (NRC), his wife said.
While sources said he was being booked under Section 151 of the CrPC, police were yet to officially state if he had been detained or arrested and for what offence.
“Sandeep Pandey arrested. Taken to Thakurganj thana,” his wife Arundhati Dhuru, an activist, said in a text message.
Mr. Pandey’s friends shared videos showing the social activist being driven away in a police jeep.
Mr. Pandey was allegedly picked up from near the Hussainabad Clocktower, where several hundred women have been staging a sit-in against the CAA since last month.
The pamphlets distributed by Mr. Pandey, which had been signed by a number of activists, were titled “Desh ko Baatne ki, Lootne ki aur Bechne ki Rajneeti nahi chalegi’ (The politics of dividing the country, looting it and selling it won’t work).”
The signatories to the pamphlet urged citizens to unite and turn the Preamble to the Constitution “into a reality.”
