Thaindian News

Bhopal, July 6 (IANS) Leader of Opposition in the Madhya Pradesh Assembly Jamuna Devi and a few other Congress leaders were arrested here Sunday afternoon while they were staging a sit-in outside the chief minister’s house to protest the arrests of senior party leaders in violence-hit Indore earlier in the day. Communal clashes rocked Indore during the shutdown call by the Bharatiya Janata Party and Vishwa Hindu Parishad against the revocation of land allotment to the Shri Amarnath Shrine Board by the Jammu and Kashmir government.

Six people were killed during the violence that continued unabated for three days despite curfew being imposed in the entire city.

When senior Congress leaders, including AICC general secretary and former state chief minister Digvijay Singh, Madhya Pradesh Congress Committee president Suresh Pachouri, state Congress election campaign committee chairman Ajay Singh and Congress state incharge Narain Sami,reached Indore Sunday morning they were detained at the airport.

Later, the place of their detention in Indore was declared a temporary jail and the arrest of the leaders was announced by the police.

However, the Congress leaders insisted that they be provided curfew passes and allowed to meet the affected people.

When the news of the Congress leaders’s arrest at Indore reached Bhopal, Jamuna Devi, state Congress spokesman Manak Agarwal and J.P. Dhanopia and others held a sit-in outside the chief minister house inBHopal at 3.30 p.m., demanding that the Congress leaders be released and allowed to meet the riot-affected people in Indore.

They also demanded the resignation of Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan.

Besides Jamuna Devi, others arrested in Bhopal include state Congress spokesmen K.K. Mishra and P.C. Sharma, Congress state legal cell president J.P. Dhanopia, Bhopal MayorSunil Sood and former Mayor Vibha Patel.