' It was a big humiliation for me to be held like that'.

DID the police needlessly drag along businessman Samir Thapar while looking for Manu Sharma? Thapar claimed he had come out of LAP, Hotel Samrat's nightclub, around the same time as Sahil Dhingra -- Manu's friend, when the police picked him up for driving a noisy Ferrari.

Thapar said it was humiliating to be taken away by the police but he put up with it assuming that he would be released once the personnel realised he was not involved in any rowdiness.

" I did not call my lawyer thinking since I had done no wrong, I would be released. I sat in the room of the station house officer ( SHO) for a long time and I waited for the cops to realise that I had not done anything," Thapar, a resident of 13, Aurangzeb Road, said over the phone.

" But I was shocked when in the afternoon, I was taken to a court and had to get a bail," he added.

Thapar, who belongs to the JCT group, is a regular at LAP. Arjun Rampal, the owner of LAP, also supported his version, claiming Thapar was a " valued member" of the nightclub and would continue to be so.

" As far as I know, the police had made some objection to the noise that Thapar's car, which is a Ferrari, was making. But a Ferrari makes that noise," Rampal said.

Police officers, however, said Thapar was not held without reason.

They claimed Thapar had obstructed the policemen when guards were being asked to show their arms licences.

Police officers claimed that the CCTV footage had been examined by top officials. " The top brass did not feel that the Chanakyapuri police had done anything wrong.

In case anyone goes to the court, we will too," a source claimed.

Officers claimed the Chanakyapuri SHO, Jagat Singh, and the additional SHO had led the teams that were sent to search for Manu Sharma.

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