Ex-Uttar Pradesh IPS officer Amitabh Thakur, who had announced that he would contest against chief minister Yogi Adityanath in the upcoming state assembly polls, due early next year, was on Saturday allegedly put under "house arrest" after he tried to visit Gorakhpur, Adityanath's home town, to hold a public contact program.
According to the sources here, Thakur was prevented from leaving for Gorakhpur in the morning and was taken back to his house in Gomti Nagar area.
Cops were deployed around his house, sources said.
While Thakur claimed that he had been put under "house arrest", the police officials said that he had only been stopped from going to Gorakhpur as there was apprehension of breach of peace and threat to his security.
Thakur had said that he would conrest against Adityanath from wherever he filed nomination in protest against his repressive and undemocratic policies. "It doesn't matter how many votes do I get.....I will force Adityanath to follow the model code of conduct in letter and spirit," he had said.
The firebrand ex-IPS officer, who had been usually given insignificant postings in view of his plain speaking, had irked the BJP government, when he predicted that gangster Vikas Dubey, who had killed eight cops and was nabbed in Ujjain in Madhya Pradesh last year, would be killed in encounter even before it happened.
Similarly had again embarrassed the bureaucracy and the government after he demanded action against the district magistrate of Hathras following brutal rape and murder of a woman there.