Bharatiya Janata Party MP Lokendra Pratap Singh alleged on Sunday that people are using black magic to target him. The MLA from Mohammadi in UP's Lakhimpur Kheri took to the social media platform Facebook and shared a photo of what he called a "black magic and conjuring" setup to target him. In the photo, several items, including seeds and a photograph of the MLA himself, can be seen kept in a basket on a red cloth. A small container of vermilion, a bottle containing a yellow-brown-coloured liquid, was kept near the basket.
"I am an ardent devotee of Lord Shiva. Nothing will happen with such tricks. But these people with distorted mentality, even in the twentieth century, when our science had reached the moon, still believed in tricks," the BJP MLA said.
Earlier in April, the wife of Samajwadi Party leader Azam Khan lodged a police complaint against a man alleging that he threw a small bundle inside the main gate of her house containing random articles, including clothes, and said that it may be associated with "black magic", as reported by the news agency PTI.
Police had said they had arrested the man who was mentally challenged and also suspended four of its personnel deployed outside Khan's house. Superintendent of Police Ashok Kumar Shukla said, "A mentally challenged person was responsible for throwing a bundle inside the house of Azam Khan. He has been arrested and efforts are being made to send him to a mental institution," as quoted by PTI.
"Four police personnel deployed in the security at the house of Azam Khan were suspended for dereliction of duty," added the SP. The man was captured on CCTV installed outside Khan's house but was not recognised immediately, PTI reported. According to the complaint filed by Khan’s wife, Tazeen Fatma, the incident took place around 6 a.m.