As protests over the killing of a sanitation worker in East Delhi entered the third day on Sunday, AAP MLA Kuldeep Kumar, who had been at the forefront of the agitation, was picked up by police from his residence early Tuesday and detained for over 10 hours. This comes on a day when the Delhi Mayor announced Rs 10 lakh compensation and a job for one member of the deceased worker’s family.

With his whereabouts unknown for most of the day, Kumar’s wife Deepa moved the Delhi High Court with a Habeas Corpus plea. The plea was disposed of after Delhi Police informed the court that Kumar had been released at 3.48 pm.

After his release, Kumar, the MLA from Kondli in East Delhi, told that he had been “kidnapped” while he was asleep at home.

“Around 150 personnel, all in plain clothes, came to my house. Around 50 of them entered the house and, without informing my family, forcibly dragged me into their vehicle. They took me somewhere in Preet Vihar, where I later learned that it was a Narcotics Department office. They released me only after they were informed that my party was going to file a Habeas Corpus petition in court,” Kumar said.

Police, however, said Kumar and five others, including members of the Bhim Army, had been detained for allegedly “instigating people tocreatea ruckus” and obstructing garbage collection work.

“They were all detained and taken to different locations. They were kept in detention under Section 65 of the Delhi Police Act, which empowers the police to take people into preventive detention,” an officer said.

The detainees were released around an hour before the court hearing, which was held after Deepa sought urgent listing of her plea.

At the court

Story continues below this ad

During the hearing, senior advocate Shadan Farasat, appearing for Deepa, said, “Just a few minutes back we are informed he (Kumar) is released. Can they invoke draconian provisions of preventive detention?”

The plea alleged that before leaving, the police officers destroyed CCTV cameras installed at Kumar’s residence and took away the DVR (Digital Video Recorder) with them, “evidently with the intent to destroy the evidence of their illegal acts”.

Deepa alleged that she apprehended that Kumar’s detention was intended “to muzzle his voice and to keep him away from the said protest, and that he may be falsely implicated in some case”.

Disposing of the plea, a bench of Justices Navin Chawla and Ravinder Dudeja said Kumar’s release had served the purpose of the petition. “The petitioner’s family will be at liberty to take appropriate legal recourse,” it said.

Story continues below this ad

Earlier in the day, AAP Delhi convener Saurabh Bharadwaj had raised an alarm about Kuldeep’s disappearance.

“Today, at around 4 am, around 20 policemen in plainclothes came and kidnapped AAP MLA Kuldeep Kumar. He had been raising his voice for sanitation workers and demanding compensation for the family. They demanded that Chief Minister Rekha Gupta meet the family, but instead of meeting the protesters, they took MLA Kuldeep Kumar to an undisclosed location.”

“Police are pressuring the family… to cremate the body now. The police took his body from the mortuary of LBS Hospital to his house… Looks like a repetition of the Hathras forced cremation,” he alleged.

A cremation

While the court proceedings were under way, the body of 27-year-old Anil Kumar, the sanitation worker whose killing triggered the protests that continued for the third day on Tuesday, was cremated in the afternoon.

Story continues below this ad

His cousin Surender Kumar alleged that the family had been pushed by police to “cremate the body as quickly as possible”.

“After the postmortem at LBS Hospital at around 3 am, the police brought Anil’s body to his sister’s house in Trilokpuri. Then all of them came to Khoda Colony in Ghaziabad where our families live. The Uttar Pradesh Police then arrived and began making arrangements for the cremation,” he said.

A source in the Delhi Police said that as the last rites were to be conducted in Ghaziabad, the force had sought help from the local police to “manage the situation during the cremation”. The family conducted the final rites around 2 pm at a cremation ground in Mohan Nagar.

Anil, a contractual worker employed by Metro Waste Handling Pvt Ltd, an agency working with the Municipal Corporation of Delhi, was stabbed to death in East Delhi’s Kalyanpuri early Sunday.

Protest continues

Story continues below this ad

A day after the killing, sanitation workers had gathered in protest and demanded compensation for his family. On Tuesday, hundreds of Anil’s colleagues gathered at the Khirichpur bus stand near National Highway 24 and the Metro Waste depot, threatening a “chakka jam” on the highway if those detained were not released. Personnel from the Central Reserve Police Force and Delhi Police were deployed at the spot.

Delhi Mayor Pravesh Wahi said in the evening that the MCD had put pressure on Metro Waste Handling to pay a compensation of Rs 10 lakh to the family and a job for Anil’s elder brother.

“A cheque for Rs 8 lakh had been prepared by the agency. We pressured them to add Rs 2 lakh more,” he said, adding that the killing was a matter of personal enmity and doesn’t threaten the general safety of sanitation workers across Delhi.

The family, however, said the compensation did not address their concerns.

Story continues below this ad

“If a government job was provided, at least the household situation would have improved a bit. They work as masons – sometimes they get work, sometimes they don’t. The elder brother is unemployed. There is a younger sister who needs to be married,” Surender said.