A video has gone viral on social media showing policemen taking the law into their own hands and flogging Muslim youths after tying them to an electric pole. The crime of the youths was that they allegedly threw stones at a Garba event.
Amit Cowper
GANDHINAGAR— A video has gone viral showing people in Undhela village in the Kheda district of Gujarat, cheering police brutality on seven to eight Muslim youths alleged to have created trouble at a local Garba festival venue. The viral video is in circulation on social media with questions asked about a Gujarat model where the rule of law is violated as police take matters into their own hands rather than following due process.
Videos that have gone viral on Twitter show Muslim men tied to an electric pole and policemen flogging them. The men are alleged to have thrown stones at a Navratri Garba event.
Crowds were seen cheering as officers watched plainclothes cops hit the men.
A local news outlet also shared a video shot in Undhela village, where a high-rank police official is seen flogging seven to eight persons with a baton as his subordinate ranked police personnel holds their hands around an RCC pole. All these men being flogged can be seen repeatedly pleading to the official, that they were sorry and asked them to be pardoned, without any success.
The scene continues with the public cheering the police action of flogging the accused and chanting ‘Bharat Mata ki Jai’ slogans.
Three Congress MLAs, Gayasuddin Shaikh from Danilimda constituency in Ahmedabad, Imran Khedawala from Jamalpur-Khadia constituency, and Mohammed Peerzada from Vankaner, have written to the Directorate General of Police (DGP), Gujarat, regarding the police atrocity and demanded stern action against the police officials involved in it.
“Despite people from both the communities (Hindu and Muslim) getting hurt in a stone pelting incident involving Garba playing, the Kheda police have registered complaints from only one community and arrested 35 persons from the Muslim community. Not only that, the police even manually tied them to a flagpole and flogged them with a police baton, taking law into their own hands in public. The present public even cheered this thrashing and applauded the police procedure. We are condemning this entire episode in the strictest form,” says the letter by the three legislators.
“Politically linked institutions and political people are openly making inflammatory speeches, thereby conspiring and causing animosity between two religious communities, to create a chaotic environment. This results in communalism being flared up in the state. As the administration does not act against such elements, the public perception that the government is supporting and endorsing these type of acts is strengthened.
The letter further writes, “The police action should be unbiased, unprejudiced and without any political influence. We also demand the strictest action against those who have violated the law and created a ruckus. But stop harassing innocent people.”
“There is a due process of law in the state and nobody has the right to take law into their own hands. We demand an urgent suspension of all the police officials who took law into their own hands by thrashing the accused in the public,” says the letter.
Even the Jamiat Ulama-i-Hind (JUH), Gujarat, has written a letter to the state DGP to file a police complaint against the erring police officials, immediately suspend them and order a high-level probe into the entire episode. The letter has specifically asked for action to be taken against the Kheda Local Crime Branch (LCB) police inspector Ashok v Parmar and other police officers.
News agency PTI had reported that a mob of around 150 people threw stones at a Garba event on the premises of a temple on Monday night.
According to the First Information Report, members of the Muslim community in the village objected to Garba being organized near a mosque, which is located across from the temple.
