Following party chief's 'advice' cost this worker dearly

Lucknow: As a loyal party worker, Santram Kashyap took the words of his party president, who was inducted in the Uttar Pradesh cabinet recently, at face value realising little that the words of the politicians should be accepted with a pinch of salt.

This reality dawned on Kashyap only after his humiliation.

The only fault of Kashyap, a local worker of Suheldev Bhartiya Samaj Party (SBSP) in UP's Farrukhabad district, was that he acted on the advice of the party president and newly inducted UP minister Om Prakash Rajbhar that the party leaders and workers should adorn the ''yellow scarf'' (SBSP flag) while approaching the cops if they wanted to get them to act on their complaints.

On Monday, Kashyap, who had put on a yellow scarf, went to the Nawabganj police station in Farrukhabad district in connection with a complaint lodged by another party worker and reportedly exerted pressure on the cops to act on the complaint at the earliest. He also allegedly flaunted his political affiliations and threatened to get them transferred elsewhere with the help of his party president.

According to the reports, the cops not only took away his yellow scarf but also his cell phone and made him sit in the police station for hours. The SBSP leader also alleged that the cops also 'misbehaved' with him.

Irate SBSP workers later held a demonstration before the police station demanding action against the cops.

Rajbhar, soon after being made a minister, likened himself to 'Gabbar Singh' of 'Sholay' fame and asked his party workers not to be afraid of the cops. ''Put on a yellow scarf when you (workers) go to the police station....the cops will see me in your face and do the work quickly,'' he had said. He had also said that his authority was only next to the UP chief minister Yogi Adityanath.