Narendra Kumar Kushwaha, a former BSP MP who was one of eleven expelled from Parliament in 2005 in connection with the cash-for-query scandal, was arrested this evening in eastern UP’s Sonebhadra for his alleged involvement in the rape of a BSP worker.

Police said that at the time of his arrest, Kushwaha had a gunshot wound, sustained in “accidental firing” from his own revolver. Police said he was “in an inebriated state”. He was admitted to the Sadar Hospital in Sonebhadra from where he was later being moved to Varanasi.

Kushwaha, who once represented Mirzapur-Bhadohi in Lok Sabha, had been evading the law, police said, ever since a non-bailable warrant was issued against him in a month-old case of the rape of a BSP worker in Sidhi, Madhya Pradesh.

Chopan Station Officer J K Singh told The Indian Express that Kushwaha had been admitted to hospital only for the treatment of the gunshot injury. “One of his neighbours reported the accident to us following which we rushed to the spot to find Kushwaha injured and in an inebriated state,” Singh said. Earlier in the day, there was a rumour that Kushwaha had shot and injured his wife. But his wife later gave it in writing to police that she had hurt herself in a fall.