Police arrest Bengal MLA Humayun Kabir after he votes in Rejinagar

Police arrested Humayun Kabir, the MLA for Nowda and the leader of the Aam Janata Unnayan Party, on Tuesday during polling in the Rejinagar by-election in Murshidabad. He had already voted. India Today reported that he cast his ballot with his family at a booth in Shaktipur village after polling opened at about 8am, then went to the AJUP office in Rejinagar. Officers arrived there after allegations that he was stirring tension in several areas. A video from the office shows police pulling him by the shirt and putting him in a vehicle.

In the video Kabir accuses the police of "looting the vote" and of partisanship. Officers told him to go home. He refused and said he would stay at the booth. As he was taken away he said: "Whether I am being arrested or detained, I know nothing." He had spent the morning criticising the deployment outside his house and saying police were being used to intimidate voters.

Why this booth matters

Rejinagar is a by-election, not a general election, so the seat's arithmetic is local and the security plan is still a state operation. An MLA from a neighbouring constituency who turns up at a party office after voting is ordinary campaign behaviour until the police log a complaint of instigation. The arrest converts that complaint into the day's picture. West Bengal by-elections have a long record of booth complaints, agent expulsions and short detentions that end without a charge sheet. The fact that separates Tuesday is the video, the named MLA, and his own line that he does not know whether the action is an arrest or a detention.

That distinction is not cosmetic. An arrest requires a recorded offence and opens a custody clock under the criminal procedure code. A detention for breach of the peace can end when the poll closes. Kabir's uncertainty, spoken into the camera, is also the public's. India Today used both words in its headlines through the morning. Until the station diary or a remand application is public, the legal status is what the officers write, not what the clip shows.

Murshidabad votes in a landscape of close booths and long memories of poll-day complaints. A by-election concentrates officers on one assembly segment instead of spreading them across the state. That density is what Kabir called intimidation when he objected to the deployment outside his house. It is also what the district administration will call a normal security plan if it issues a note. The two descriptions can both be true of the same headcount. The video does not show the size of the force. It shows the moment the force decided he was not going back to the booth.

Kabir's break with the old party map

Kabir sits in the West Bengal assembly from Nowda as the face of AJUP, a party he formed after leaving the Trinamool Congress. His pitch in Murshidabad has been that the ruling party and the main opposition both ignore local complaints about policing and jobs. A by-election in Rejinagar, in the same district, is a direct test of whether that pitch moves votes or only fills a party office. Arresting him after he has voted removes him from the booth area for the rest of the day. It does not remove the ballots already in the box, including his own.

Indian election law treats the poll as continuing until the last voter has a chance to mark a ballot and the machines are sealed. An arrested candidate or campaigner can still have agents inside the booth if those agents were issued passes and have not themselves been removed. India Today did not report a mass removal of AJUP agents. The practical effect of taking Kabir to the station is on the road outside, where voters see the leader leave in a police vehicle, not on the sealed unit inside.

The Election Commission and the district administration had not, in the reports available on Tuesday morning, published a turnout figure or a statement on the arrest. The measurable sequence is the 8am start, the family vote at Shaktipur, the move to the Rejinagar office, the allegation of instigation, the shirt-pull on video, and a ride to the station. Counting will show whether the booth he wanted to stand at recorded a normal stream of voters after he left. A later remand paper will show whether Tuesday was an arrest with a named section or a holding action that ended at close of poll.