An undergraduate student in Maharashtra's Amravati district has alleged that state Education Minister Vinod Tawde ordered his arrest when he was recording a conversation between him and a fellow student, a charge denied by the minister.
The student, Yuvraj Dabad, also claimed that following the alleged order, the local police detained him for a couple of hours, seized his smartphone and returned it after the video-recording was deleted from it.
Tawde, however, refuted the allegation, saying he did not order the student's arrest and that "lies" were being spread against him.
A top police official in Amravati said the student was neither arrested nor detained, and nothing was deleted from his mobile phone.
The alleged incident took place on Friday after Tawde inaugurated an elocution competition at a college in Amravati, located around 680 km from here.
The minister was leaving after his speech at the event when some students of a journalism course reached out to him near his vehicle, seeking his response on a free-education policy.
Prashant Rathod, a student of the college, said, "I was told by Education Minister Vinod Tawde to start working somewhere if I could not afford the educational expenses. My question to him was whether the state could have a free-education policy."