'Illegal' arrest of 3 Cong workers: Raj police tells court DE against officials involved has begun

Bhopal/Jabalpur: In an affidavit presented in the Madhya Pradesh high court, Rajasthan police said on Thursday that a departmental enquiry has been initiated against the police officials allegedly involved in the arrest of three Congress IT cell workers from Bhopal on April 20, 2026 and taking them to Rajasthan for interrogation over posting of a ‘fake’ letter of former Rajasthan chief minister Vasundhara Raje Scindia on the Women Reservation Bill on social media.In response to a habeas corpus petition following their arrest, the MP high court on May 12, 2026, held the arrest prima facie illegal and directed action against the officials of Bhopal and Rajasthan police involved in the incident.During hearing of the petition on Thursday, an affidavit was presented in the court of Acting Chief Justice Vivek Rusia and Justice Pradeep Mittal stating that a departmental enquiry has been initiated against the concerned Rajasthan police officials.

The court took the affidavit on record and deferred hearing of the case to July 7, 2026.While holding the arrest of the three Congress IT cell workers and taking them to Rajasthan prima facie a case of illegal police custody, the bench comprising then Chief Justice Sanjeev Sachdeva and Justice Vinay Saraf on May 12 said that copies of the statements of the Congress workers, recorded by a judicial magistrate at Jabalpur at the behest of the High Court, should be sent to the Bhopal police commissioner, who would treat them as complaints and take appropriate legal action.

The police commissioner was asked to do so within three months and present a report in court on the next hearing of the case.After Rajasthan police allegedly took away the three Congress IT workers to Rajasthan with the help of Bhopal police on April 20, 2026, Khizer Khan filed a habeas corpus petition in the MP High Court seeking production of the three IT cell workers — Nikhil, Bilal and Inam — in court, alleging that they were under illegal custody and taken to Rajasthan without obtaining a transit remand from a judicial magistrate.After they were produced in court by Rajasthan police, the sequence of events narrated by the police from their arrest to their journey to Rajasthan differed significantly from what the Congress IT workers told the court, prompting the judges to ask the Chief Judicial Magistrate, Jabalpur to depute a judicial magistrate to record their statements.Rajasthan police had told the court then that the three Congress IT cell workers were not arrested or detained and that police only accompanied them to Rajasthan.After taking the statements of the three Congress workers on record, the judges had said their arrest and the manner in which they were taken to Rajasthan appeared to be prima facie illegal. They had directed that a copy of the statements be dispatched to the Bhopal police commissioner for necessary action according to law, treating the statements as a complaint.