The Union home ministry on Tuesday issued a Look Out Circular against Shiromani Akali Dal leader Bikram Singh Majithia, who was booked in a drugs case on Monday evening, NDTV reported.

A Look Out Circular is aimed at ensuring that a person wanted in a criminal case does not escape the country. Unidentified police officials told NDTV that Majithia has left for Rajasthan.

The home ministry’s Bureau of Immigration said that the circular will remain in force “until and unless a deletion request is received by the BOI from the originator itself”, The Indian Express reported.

The first information report against Majithia has invoked Sections 25 (allowing premises to be used for commission of an offence), 27A (financing illicit traffic and harbouring offenders) and 29 (abetment and criminal conspiracy) of the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act.

The FIR has been registered on the basis of a report of a Special Task Force on drug-related cases that was submitted to the Punjab and Haryana High Court in 2018. It has been filed at the Punjab State Crime Police Station at Mohali.

Majithia, who is the brother-in-law of Shiromani Akali Dal chief Sukhbir Singh Badal, is a prominent face of the party. He is the brother of former Punjab Cabinet minister and party leader Harsimrat Kaur Badal.

Badal said that the FIR was the worst example of political vendetta, according to NDTV. “We have been airing our fears about such a vendetta,” he said. “We will fight the injustice.”

The Congress and other political parties had been accusing Majithia of links with a drug racket in Punjab.

On Tuesday, Punjab Congress President Navjot Singh Sidhu said that the filing of the FIR was “a slap on the face of all those powerful who slept for years on issues at the heart of Punjab’s soul”.

The Aam Aadmi Party said the FIR against Majithia was an “election stunt” of the ruling Congress.