Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan on Thursday, 6 July, met Dashmat Rawat, the man on whom a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) worker was seen urinating in a video that went viral on social media.
The accused, Pravesh Shukla, who is reportedly a close aide of BJP MLA Kedarnath Shukla, was arrested in Sidhi on Tuesday, 4 July. Pravesh's home was also demolished by the local administration on Wednesday following condemnation due to the incident
During the meeting on Thursday, which took place at the chief minister's official residence in Bhopal, Chouhan was seen washing the feet of Rawat and felicitating him with a garland of flowers. He also expressed grief over the incident and apologised to the victim.
"I met the minister, it felt good. He called up my family and spoke to them," Rawat was quoted as saying by news agency ANI after the meeting.
The undated 10-second video, which is said to be several months old, went viral on social media on Tuesday, creating an uproar in the state. In it, Pravesh Shukla is seen purportedly urinating on a man in an alleged inebriated state while smoking a cigarette.
Meanwhile, late on Wednesday night, locals were seen showing slippers to BJP MLA Kedarnath Shukla and raising slogans over the incident.
The accused has been booked by the Madhya Pradesh Police under Sections of The Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989 and provisions of the National Security Act (NSA), 1980.
Expressing outrage over the incident, Chouhan had tweeted saying, "NSA has been invoked, bulldozers are also working and if needed, we will even bury the criminals 10 feet under the ground. The message is clear, so people with wrong intentions think 10 times before committing crime in Madhya Pradesh."
(With inputs from ANI.)
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