PANAJI
A pitched battle between the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Opposition Congress party has broken out in Madhya Pradesh where elections are due this year end over unconfirmed media reports of a former BJP minister being beaten up by a B-list Bollywod actress, allegedly for refusing to pay for 'escort services'.
The Bhopal unit of the BJP has filed a complaint before the MP police's crime branch seeking action against the Congress' IT cell for posting a news report with details of the alleged episode in Goa.
The Congress through its official 'MP Congress' twitter handle has ridiculed the complaint and mocked Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan for using the police to shoot the messenger.
MP Opposition Leader Kamal Nath also joined in and took to Twitter to accuse the BJP government of wanting to crush every medium of expression.
A loose translation of Kamal Nath's Twitter post read: "Bharatiya Janata Party has lodged an FIR against Madhya Pradesh Congress Social Media Department for posting news of a reputed newspaper. The Bharatiya Janata Party government, which has lost the trust among all sections of society, now wants to crush every medium of expression."
In another tweet, Kamal Nath said the Congress will continue the fight against abuse of power.
According to reports published in some newspapers in MP, a former BJP Minister and sitting MLA had come to Goa where they reportedly met a B-list Bollywood actress who also worked as an escort. The latter beat the politician with shoes after she was angered by his refusal to pay up for the escort services, said the newspaper reports which were posted by the Congress handle.
To avoid bad press, the hotel management where the incident allegedly took place, intervened to resolve the matter and hush it up without reporting it to the police, the report states.
Following Chouhan's instructions, the Madhya Paradesh police wrote to their Goa counterparts seeking information of the identity of the persons involved in the incident but the Goa police have responded that they have no clue and that the case appears to be 'completely fake', the newspaper reports have claimed.
