Manipur’s award-winning actress Devita Devi today got an audience she had probably never bargained for.
Dressed in jeans and a brown top, with a white scarf covering her head, a sobbing Devita was arrested at Imphal airport as a large gathering, which had probably only seen her on the silver screen, watched an unlikely script unfold in real life.
Bishnupur police, who took her into custody for interrogation, however, chose to remain silent on why she was let off by Delhi police. Neither would they say how she was brought here today.
The matinee idol, with quite a few hits to her name, was picked up along with a senior leader of the militant Kanglei Yawol Kanna Lup (KYKL) by a joint team of Delhi police and state police from a guesthouse in South Extension of Delhi on June 26.
While the rebel leader, identified as R.K. Raghunath, alias Nongshaba, a self-styled captain of the KYKL, was taken into custody by Delhi police, Devita was let off.
A Manipur police team camping in Delhi for the raids brought Devita to Imphal this afternoon.
“We are arresting her,” a police official of Bishnupur district told mediapersons before taking the actor away in a police van.
No explanation was forthcoming from the police about why she was let off by Delhi police and why she was arrested on her arrival in Imphal.
“We have nothing more to say at the moment barring the fact that we are making a formal arrest,” the police official told reporters waiting at the airport at Tulihal in Imphal West. The police also refused to disclose under which act she was being arrested.
Devita’s mother, Urikhinbam Umabati Devi, yesterday said her daughter was innocent and that she had gone to the national capital for a medical check-up at Apollo Hospital.
“She was in Delhi for medical check-up. She has no links with militants. We don’t believe that she was with the arrested militant,” her mother had said.
Before her arrest in Delhi on Saturday, Devita had told her mother over phone that she would return on Sunday.
Umabati Devi has already approached the Film Forum Manipur, an apex body of Manipur film industry, to clear Devita’s name.
The forum, however, is yet to take a decision. Chairman of the forum W. Lalitkumar said they would soon discuss the case.Lalitkumar had earlier described the actor’s arrest as “very unfortunate” and said this could send a wrong signal about the image of the film community.
