Chhattisgarh minister allegedly assaults guest house worker, Congress seeks his resignation

The alleged assault of a government guest house worker by Chhattisgarh minister Kedar Kashyap in Bastar’s Jagdalpur has sparked a political row.

The staffer, Khitendra Pandey, has filed a police complaint, The Indian Express reported. It was unclear when the alleged incident took place.

The Bharatiya Janata Party leader denied the allegations.

The guest house worker said that he was called to the minister when he was making snacks.

“When I went there, the minister began abusing me and demanding to know why the guest rooms weren’t unlocked,” the newspaper quoted him as saying. “I told him they were.”

“But he [Kashyap] got upset and removed his footwear, hit me with his hands, grabbed my shirt and slapped me a couple of times,” he alleged.

Kashyap verbally abused Pandey “using a cuss word related to my mother”, The Hindu quoted the worker as saying.

The police said it has launched an inquiry into the matter.

Commenting on the incident, Congress leader Bhupesh Baghel said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chief Minister Vishnu Deo Sai were “protectors of criminals”.

“Even after a minister, intoxicated with the addiction of power, assaulted a circuit house employee, hurled abuses at his mother and sister, and behaved indecently, neither has the minister been asked to resign so far, nor has any statement come from the government or administration,” Baghel said.

Baghel, a former...

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