Delhi Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia became the victim of an ink attack on Monday afternoon. The incident took place in front of the residence of Lieutenant-Governor Najeeb Jung, whom he had gone to meet.
Jung had recently urged the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leader to cut short his trip to Finland — where the latter had gone to study the country's education system — in light of the outbreak of vector-borne diseases like chikungunya and dengue in Delhi.
The man who threw ink on Sisodia on Monday claimed he had done so because of the deputy chief minister's Finland trip. Identified as one Brajesh Shukla, he said while being handed over to the police: "He is going abroad on our money, and people of Delhi are suffering." Delhi's DCP North, Madhur Verma, later said that Shukla had been detained and was being interrogated.
Leaders of the AAP were thought to be conspicuously absent at a time of need for Delhi. Chief Minister and AAP convenor Arvind Kejriwal was also away from the capital. He was in Bengaluru (formerly Bangalore) where he underwent a surgical procedure on his tongue to treat the chronic cough he had been suffering from.
Delhi Health Minister Satyandra Jain's claim, citing online sources, that chikungunya was not fatal, at a time when the disease had already caused the death of several people, did not help improve the party's image in the time of crisis.
However, this is not the first time an AAP leader has been attacked with black ink. Kejriwal has been at the receiving end of several such incidents, the latest of which took place at a stadium in Delhi in January this year, when he was extolling the success of the traffic formula involving odd-even numbered cars.
In 2014, Yogendra Yadav's face was smeared with black ink at an AAP rally. He quit the party in 2015.
The AAP, however, on Monday took to Twitter to blame the BJP and Jung for the incident, and turn the ink attack in its favour with the hashtag "#InkWillWriteHistory."
See the attack on Manish Sisodia here:
