Ahmedabad, Apr 26 (ANI): A young engineer in his early twenties threw a shoe at Prime Minister Manmohan Singh while he was addressing an election rally here on Sunday afternoon.

The shoe, however, missed its mark.

The offender identified as Hitesh Chauhan was sitting in the first row during the rally when he hurled his shoe.

Chauhan was immediately nabbed by the security men deputed for the PM’s security.

During enquiry from Hitesh, it was learnt that he was an engineering student and a resident of Bapu Nagar area of the city, and threw the shoe to secure publicity.

Prime Minister has advised not to lodge any F.I.R against the culprit and opted to forgive him for his action.

Meanwhile, the Congress party has reacted to the incident and described it as “unfortunate”.

During the last few days there have been a number of incidents of shoe-throwing in differrent parts of the country.

On April 7, an accredited journalist in New Delhi had expressed his protest over CBI giving clean chit to Congress leader Jagdish Tytler in anti-Sikh riots of 1984, by hurling a shoe at Union Home Minister P. Chidambaram. Congress leader Naveen Jindal also became a victim of a similar incident when an agitated school teacher hurled a shoe towards him during a rally.

In another such incident, a party member hurled his wooden footwear at Bharatiya Janata Party’s primeministerial candidate L.K. Advani during a rally in Madhya Pradesh’s Katni town. (ANI)