Noted poet Munawwar Rana's son arrested in Lucknow for faking attack on himself

Poet Munawwar Rana`s son was arrested by the Rae Bareli police from Lalkuan locality in Lucknow for allegedly faking an attack on himself to implicate his uncles.

Lucknow: Poet Munawwar Rana`s son has been arrested for allegedly faking an attack on himself to implicate his uncles. Tabrez Rana, who is embroiled in an ancestral property dispute with his uncle, was arrested by the Rae Bareli police from Lalkuan locality in Lucknow, late on Wednesday night.

Rana, who wanted to contest the state assembly elections from Tiloi in Rae Bareli, had staged the attack on himself to get security and media coverage, besides implicating his uncles, the police official said. He had lodged a complaint with the Rae Bareli police alleging that he was attacked by two bike-borne men at a petrol pump in the Hindola Ratapur area on June 28.

When a Special Operations Group of the Uttar Pradesh police probing the case, scanned the CCTV footage of the area, several discrepancies were found in Rana`s claims. Tabrez was found alone in a vehicle at the time of the incident though he had claimed that there was another person with him.

Rae Bareli SP Shlok Kumar had said that Tabrez Rana, along with his two accomplices Haleem and Sultan Ali, faked the attack on himself.

An FIR was also lodged last Friday against Munawwar Rana also allegedly for hurting religious feelings by comparing Valmiki, who wrote Ramayana, with Taliban, police had said.

"The FIR has been registered against Munawar Rana on the complaint of one P L Bharti, who has alleged that the poet hurt the religious feelings by comparing Valmiki with the Taliban," a senior official had said here.

The FIR was registered at Hazratganj police station under sections 153A (Promoting enmity between different groups on ground of religion, race, place of birth etc), 295 A (deliberate and malicious acts intended to outrage religious feelings of any class), 505(1)(B) (intent to cause, or which is likely to cause, fear or alarm among the public) and the SC/ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act.

Meanwhile, Munawwar Rana said on Thursday that his son was being targeted because he had expressed his opinion that was against the state government. "This government believes that every Muslim is a terrorist," he said.