Congress' North East Delhi Candidate Kanhaiya Kumar Assaulted
Congress candidate Kanhaiya Kumar was assaulted on Friday while campaigning for the upcoming Lok Sabha elections in North East Delhi. The incident, captured on video and shared widely on X, reveals a group of men approaching Kanhaiya Kumar under the guise of garlanding him, only to launch a physical attack and douse him with black ink.
The assault occurred outside the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) office in New Usmanpur, shortly after Kanhaiya Kumar concluded a meeting with local councillor Chhaya Sharma. Eyewitness accounts and video footage depict a chaotic scene as Kanhaiya Kumar”s supporters rushed to his aid, leading to a broader physical altercation with the assailants. Congress and AAP contesting the Lok Sabha elections in alliance as part of the deal made between the opposition INDIA bloc parties in the national capital, Gujarat and Haryana.
Kanhaiya Kumar, a former student union president from the prestigious Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), has alleged that the attack was orchestrated by his political rival, the sitting MP Manoj Tiwari, accusing him of inciting the violence out of frustration with Kanhaiya Kumar”s increasing political traction in the constituency. “Manoj Tiwari is feeling threatened by my growing popularity and has resorted to deploying goons to intimidate me,” Kanhaiya Kumar was quoted as saying by news agencies.
The videos circulating on social media show the alleged attackers claiming their actions were a response to Kanhaiya Kumar”s purported remarks against the country and the military, adding a complex layer of political and social tension to the incident. The former student leader came to the national attention when his university and students brought under heavy scrutiny by the pro-establishment media houses and right-wing eco-system in the country for some doctored in videos in which it was alleged that the students in his campus raised anti-national slogans.
In her official complaint, Councillor Chhaya Sharma detailed the sequence of events, noting that three to four women were also injured during the melee. “The attackers initially garlanded Kanhaiya Kumar before throwing ink on him and attempting to assault him. When I intervened, they misbehaved and issued threats,” Sharma reported.
Meanwhile, fact checker journalist Mohammed Zubair said in an X post that Daksh Chaudhary, the person who attacked Kanhaiya Kumar today was recently arrested by Ghaziabad Police for conspiring to spoil the atmosphere by entering a Mosque.
There was an FIR registered against under 151A, 295, 295A, 323, 504 and 506.
Zubair has also shared an image of the alleged perpetrator sharing a dais with BJP candidate Manoj Tiwari in one of the programmes.
