Prashant Kishor alleges Bihar police detained aides ahead of Bankipur bypoll

Hours before voting got underway for the high-stakes Bankipur bypoll in Bihar, political tensions flared in the constituency on Thursday night.

Jan Suraaj Party founder Prashant Kishor, who is contesting the seat, accused the Bihar police of detaining several of his supporters, alleging the action was carried out at the behest of the ruling BJP because it "fears losing the bypoll."

The allegation came just hours before polling was set to begin for the bypoll, which was necessitated by the resignation of BJP MLA Nitin Nabin. The Bankipur contest also marks Kishor's electoral debut.

Kishor, accompanied by his supporters, reached Patna's Jakkanpur police station, where heated exchanges broke out with police personnel, who allegedly refused to reveal the whereabouts of the detained JSP workers.

Also read | Prashant Kishor to contest Bankipur bypoll, calls it ‘referendum on BJP govt’s popularity'

"I am not describing these as arrests since there is no record of which of my people have been named in which case. I came to this police station after learning that they had been kept at Jakkanpur. But here I am told that they have all been taken to different police stations. The SHO here even claims that the police station was not involved in the detentions, which were carried out at the instance of higher-ups," the former poll strategist alleged.

Kishor also alleged that the Station House Officer threatened him and his supporters, saying he would "deal with them after taking off his uniform."

After arguing with the SHO for more than half an hour, Kishor said the officer would lose his job if anything happened to his supporters.

The Jan Suraaj Party founder claimed that "clearly, the ruling BJP is behind these detentions."

"It knows it is going to lose the bypoll. The police can keep a person in custody for 24 hours without producing him before a magistrate. So a plan has been devised to keep some of my supporters in custody till voting is over," he claimed.

He said this "misuse of administrative machinery", however, would not help the ruling NDA win, despite having deployed "almost all 201 of its MLAs" for the campaign.

Although 26 candidates are in the fray in Bankipur, the contest is widely seen as a direct fight between Kishor and BJP's Neeraj Kumar Sinha, a leader of the party's youth wing.