59 people injured during protests, police brutality exhibited in Chatisgarh

May 26: Police once again exhibited its wrath and anger upon innocent citizens in a gross uncivilized way when they beat poor villagers of Ambikapur in the Sarguja district of Chattisgarh, with lathis (canes). In this whole incident 59 persons got injured and some of them seriously, including few policemen.

Reportedly, the people were protesting against the murder of a localite named Vijay Deonath, on Thursday night, though the police registered this case as a road accident. Villagers are insisting that the victim was attacked by some mafia and murdered, and later his dead body was thrown on the highways.

The locals protesting the negligence of police in this case blocked the Ambikapur-Banaras National Highway 78 and demanded the arrest of the culprits. While trying to disperse the crowd some people pelted stones on police and that was enough for our uncivilized cops to react.

The policemen on duty being frustrated by the protests retaliated and opened gunfire thereby turning the whole incident into a violent one. The police firing resulted in seriously wounding 24 persons. The protests kept on growing and a large number of people assembled again and started throwing stones at policemen. Soon after a large number of troopers came to assist the ones on duty and started by beating the locals viciously. The whole event was captured by a good number of news channels and the troopers were hardly bothered about camera confrontations.

The cops didn’t spare anyone; women, old, children and even physically challenged became the victims of police brutality. The television footage showed an old man being kicked, punched and beaten by stick, women lying on the road, and one man with serious head injury moaning.

As a response to the grave incident the state government has ordered a magisterial inquiry of the lathicharge and the unnecessary use of a large number of policemen in this incident. But ordering an inquiry may not be enough as the code of conduct of police in such incidents leaves a question mark on their induction and training. Authorities should take some strong moves to check police for misusing the power of the khaki uniform. That is why police reforms are the need of the hour.