A panchayat chief in Lakhimpur Kheri district, Uttar Pradesh, has been arrested for allegedly asking villagers not to get vaccinated against Covid-19 and misbehaving with the medical team.

Santosh Maurya, who has been accused of hindering the vaccination drive in Rautapur and Kachiyani villages, has, however, complained of gross negligence by the health department officials.

“Something grossly wrong is going on here. The entire world knows that people may develop fever and body pain after taking the vaccine. There were at least three people from our village who were hospitalised a few days after taking the first dose of vaccine in a local health centre. They would have died had their relatives not taken them to costly private hospitals in Bareilly. But these health department members didn’t come here to ask why and how they fell ill,” Maurya told reporters on Wednesday before the case was registered against him in the evening.

“There is also a provision to give paracetamol to those who have been inoculated. However, they neither gave the medicine nor alerted people about the side-effects.”

Dr A.N. Chauhan, superintendent of the local community health centre, claimed they had been giving free medicine to those who take the jab.

“A medical team had visited Kachiyani village (adjacent to Rautapur) on Wednesday. Maurya was there and he misbehaved with the team members when they sought his help to motivate the villagers for vaccination. He snatched the mobile phone of one of the team members and deleted some pictures of the drive,” Dr Chauhan said.

Maurya has been booked and arrested under Pandemic Act. “He was sent jail on Wednesday,” Anil Kumar Saini, station house officer of Mitauli, said.