The incident happened on Tuesday and its video was published by the man himself. He was later identified as Samvel Vardanian, an apparent government critic who had also been briefly detained before for allegedly calling Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian a traitor upon seeing him in the street.
The video shot by Vardanian shows him confronting Hakob Aslanian, a member of the parliamentary faction of Pashinian’s ruling Civil Contract party, on a bus and calling him an “anti-Armenian scumbag.”
“How dare you appear in public, you scumbag?” Vardanian is heard saying to Aslanian on the video before a quarrel begins during which both men exchange strong words and apparently slightly push each other.
The incident took place in front of other passengers who are heard trying to calm down the quarreling men.
Vardanian was later detained by police on suspicion of hooliganism.
Talking to reporters in parliament on Tuesday, Aslanian claimed that the man who confronted him on the bus was clearly acting “deliberately.”
“I was going to get off the bus when he blocked my way,” he said, denying that it was a case of “free speech”, as Vardanian claimed in interviews with different media before his detention.
Aslanian said he would not have taken the matter to the police had Vardanian not published the video of the incident on social media.
Meanwhile, opposition lawmaker Arman Ghazarian, who said he had contacted Vardanian, said that the man had told him about violence being used against him while he was being escorted to a detention center in a police car last night.
Citing Vardanian, Ghazarian said that the violence took place when the police officers escorting him pulled in and went out “for personal matters.” Then, he said, citing Vardanian’s account of the events, a group of four or five masked men came to beat the young man.
“His [Vardanian’s] right wrist was swollen, that’s all I’ve seen. He may have had other injuries as well under his clothes, but I couldn’t see it. It wasn’t within my jurisdiction,” the opposition lawmaker said.
He said that the young man had told him he had been “too scared” to tell the administration of the detention center about violence used against him as those who beat him had allegedly “threatened to repeat the beating if he told anyone about it.”
The police did not immediately report any information on the alleged violence against Vardanian. RFE/RL’s Armenian Service could not verify the claim independently. Later, the Ministry of Internal Affairs told local media that an internal probe into the allegation had been ordered.
The Investigative Committee said that along with making insulting remarks in public transport, threatening member of parliament Aslanian, and grossly violating the public order, Vardanian also made expressions “spreading hostility towards a political force in a public place.”