Amit Jogi, son of former Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Ajit Jogi, was on Tuesday arrested by the police from his residence in Bilaspur on charges of cheating and forgery.
Amit Jogi, who heads the Janata Congress Chhattisgarh (J), has been accused of furnishing wrong details about his birthplace in his election affidavit for the 2013 state polls.
Amit will be produced before a court and as per the orders of the court, action will be taken, Sanjay Kumar Dhruv, Superintendent of Police (Rural) in Bilaspur, told the media.
The arrest comes after a police complaint lodged against him by Sameera Paikra, the BJP candidate from Marwahi constituency in the 2013 state Assembly polls, Superintendent of Police Prashant Agrawal told PTI.
Paikra, in her complaint, has alleged that he had mentioned his place of birth as Sarbahara village in Gaurela area of Bilaspur whereas, she claimed, he was born in the US.
Amit Jogi had subsequently won the Assembly poll from Bilaspur’s Marwahi seat, reserved for Scheduled Tribe candidates.
Amit has been arrested after an investigation for about six months. An FIR was lodged against him in February this year at Gaurela police station in the district.
He was booked under Indian Penal Code Sections 420 (cheating), 467 (forgery of valuable security), 468 (forgery for purpose of cheating) and 471 (using as genuine a forged document or electronic record), Prashant Agrawal said.
After losing the 2013 polls, Paikra had filed an election petition in the Chhattisgarh High Court, challenging Amit Jogi’s caste and place of birth.
The high court dismissed the petition in January this year on the ground that the term of the Chhattisgarh Assembly (2013-2018) had already ended.
On Monday, Paikra along with some residents of Marwahi constituency staged a protest in front of the superintendent of police’s office in Bilaspur, demanding action on the FIR lodged by her against Amit Jogi.
Last week, an FIR was registered against his father and former Chhattisgarh CM Ajit Jogi following a panel report refusing to recognise him as a tribal.
During the previous Bharatiya Janata Party rule, a committee of the Tribal Welfare Department was formed to ascertain his caste status. It had declined to recognise him as tribal. Ajit Jogi had filed a plea against it in the Bilaspur High Court.
A high-level caste scrutiny committee set up by the state government last month dismissed Ajit Jogi’s claim of belonging to a Scheduled Tribe (ST) and cancelled his caste certificates.
Subsequently, Ajit Jogi, the founder of the Janata Congress Chhattisgarh (J), was booked for allegedly fraudulently obtaining caste certificates, the police said.
The claim of the senior politician, a sitting MLA from Marwahi and a former Congressman, of being a tribal was rejected multiple times in the past too.