Although a few managed to escape the sudden attack, many were roughed up when they were posted near four polling booths at Nuraninagar, in Indore, during the second phase of polling on Saturday.

Around 35 partymen had gone to Indore to help local party workers in Gujarati-dominated areas. One councillor, in condition of anonymity, narrated the ghastly event. A couple of hours after the Vadodara BJP workers were posted at the four booths, ``at around 9.30 am a few men came and asked us to leave the place,'' he said.

The unrelenting BJP men were taken aback when the group of hooligans returned after a while, some of them carrying knives, recalled another party worker. A partyman said the event might have taken a serious turn if the party workers, who were fleeing the spot, had not come across the carrying top BJP party office. The team from Vadodara lodged a complaint with the local BJP office. ``We do not know what happened later on,'' a councillor said.

A senior member from the team recalled that members from another community got wild because ``we (the BJP workers) tried to prevent bogus voting.''