Tejashwi Yadav's bodyguards rough up mediapersons

NEW DELHI: Bihar deputy chief minister Tejashwi Yadav has denied that his security staff roughed up the media on his instructions in Patna on Wednesday, saying in Facebook posts that it was in fact reporters who initiated the scuffle and his staff merely retaliated.Wednesday's incident occurred when the RJD 's Tejashwi emerged to address the media after a Bihar cabinet meeting chaired by chief minister Nitish Kumar to discuss the corruption case against the deputy CM.Tejashwi, who's RJD chief Lalu Prasad 's younger son, said that there was a mad scramble by journalists to be the first to get a "byte", when he emerged from the meeting. Reporters had also been harassing the police security outside the venue beforehand, he alleged. That's what led to the scuffle to begin with, he said, adding that he was not even fully aware of what was happening, as he was completely surrounded by media personnel."Couple of media person were putting mike behind me & brushed my ears & head also. There were moments when around ten mikes were about to hit my nose, I saved myself & duty personals were protecting it (me) while being on duty... Many security guards had minor bruises," Tejashwi said in a post on Facebook early Thursday.He completely denied anyone was beaten up on his instructions and also said he was aware that journalists' jobs are difficult."I totally understand know (sic) how difficult is their job, specially the cameramen. They were falling & competing with each other," he said.The RJD, though, has always been friendly with the media, Tejashwi said."There were reports on few channels stating that it (the roughing up of reporters) happened on my instructions and few RJD supporters carried the assault which is totally undesirable, baseless & meaningless. We always have been friendly with media and respond to them" he said.Despite defending himself from the allegations, he said the incident was unfortunate."I regret & condemn any charge on media. Such incidents must not take place, I will personally look into the matter & get it investigated", he added.The Bihar deputy CM also posted a video on Facebook in which he attempted to show what really happened.The video said it would show the viewers "the truth about the accusations put on Tejashwi Yadav by the media". Captions to the video said that Tejashwi appealed to the media to not create a commotion. The video also showed Tejashwi being hit on the head by a cameraman's mike and a caption said he was injured when that happened.Following that, the video showed media personnel hitting the police in an attempt to reach Tejashwi, at which point police and security retaliated and aggressively held them down."Even though the security guards are poor, they are still human beings with respect and will not quietly take a beating for no reason", the video concluded.