Minister Anupriya Patel says 'abused' CPWD officials should have gone to police, not media with their complaint

New Delhi [India], Sept. 10 (ANI): Minister of State for Health and Family Welfare Anupriya Patel on Saturday denied charges levelled by a Central Public Works Department (CPWD) junior engineer and a contractor that they were locked up inside her house for delayed work, and added that if somebody had misbehaved with them, then they should have informed the police and not the media. Patel accused contractor Narender Gupta of coming to her residence with an agenda. "I feel that if somebody misbehaves with you, then will you inform the police or will you tell it on national media? It means the contractor had some mal-intention and must have had come here with some agenda and or was doing all this purposely," Ptael told ANI. "They are not doing their work and are hiding everything. I don't think my staff will ever misbehave with anybody," she added. In a bizarre incident, a CPWD junior engineer and a contractor claimed that they were locked inside Patel's house over a delay in work. Contractor Narender Gupta, who was locked up in Patel's home said that the minister's family accused them of delaying the work and then locked them up. "They accused us of delaying the work of bringing tiles and then locked us up. We were told that we will be locked up until the tiles don't come," Gupta told ANI. Ajmer Singh, Assistant Engineer at the CPWD, who rescued the contractor and the junior engineer, said, "If work is underway, then there could be a delay because of any reason. It is not good to lock anyone inside the room for an hour and two." Meanwhile, Anupriya's husband Ashish Singh cried foul, saying the allegations against them are baseless. "I am not the in-charge of the bungalow and I was inside. When I came out, the workers were being scolded by the staff of the minister for delaying the work. If somebody thinks that we held them captive then they can take legal action against us," he said.(ANI)