Raja Uday Pratap Singh, father of former Uttar Pradesh Minister and strongman Raghuraj Pratap Singh a.k.a. Raja Bhaiya, will be released from house arrest on Tuesday evening, a government official said.
Pratapgarh District Magistrate, Nitin Bansal said that Uday Pratap will be freed from house arrest after Moharram is over.
“We have managed to salvage the situation after speaking to all sections of people in the locality. Since he was unwilling to cooperate with us, we put him under house arrest to thwart any possible threat to the law and order situation,” he added.
The 89-year-old erstwhile Raja Uday Pratap Singh had been sitting on dharna since last week to protest the erection of a makeshift gate by the Muslim community in the Pratapgarh area for Moharram.
Raja Bhaiya’s father had been holding a ‘bhandara’ in the area — Sheikhpur Ashik village in Kunda development block of Pratapgarh district — for the past few years.
Due to Covid-19, the bhandara could not be held for the past two years.
This year, as he began preparing for the event, the erection of the Moharram gate irked him.
On August 4, he sat on a dharna at the tehsil headquarters and all local shopkeepers downed their shutters to show their support to the Raja.
Police sources said that the Muslim community has been setting up the gate in the past too, but Uday Pratap said that the practice required to be changed after the state government recently banned use of public places for worship.
Pratapgarh Superintendent of Police, Satpal Antil said that the police and state administration would soon come up with standard operating procedures so that communal harmony prevails in the future.