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Sacked Uttar Pradesh minister Amar Mani Tripathi was on Wednesday taken into custody by the police three days after his arrest was ordered for his involvement in an abduction case.
Tripathi was picked up from near his residence in Lawrence Terrace in the heart of Lucknow when he was returning from a minister's house, police sources said.
He was taken to the Hazratganj police station, they said. He will be produced before a magistrate on Thursday, they added.
Tripathi is a Loktantrik Congress Party (LCP) MLA from Gorakhpur in eastern UP.
Speaking to rediff.com, he said that his arrest was the outcome of the internal bickering within the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party.
Tripathi's woes were triggered on December 11 when the Special Task Force (STF) of the UP police arrested five criminals from a house in Lucknow's Cantonment area along with the 15-year-old abducted son of a businessman from Basti.
The criminals allegedly 'revealed' that the Lucknow house they were staying in had been provided by Tripathi.
Coincidently, the state government had launched a special drive against criminals on December 12, the day Tripathi was sacked.
Chief Minister Rajnath Singh justified the sacking of Tripathi saying anyone having links with criminals would not be allowed to continue in his ministry.
"The police has concrete evidence against Tripathi and therefore, he has been sacked from the council of ministers," Singh had then told newspersons.
In his tenure of over one year, Rajnath Singh has sacked three influential ministers, including power minister Naresh Agarwal, tourism minister Ashok Yadav and now Amar Mani Tripathi.
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