A fact finding report into an incident of police beating in Azamgarh has revealed that the police waded into an intra village fight and beat up people while no report has been filed against the miscreants till date.
On September 5, an argument broke out between two parties belonging to the Nat community in the village of Gandhuwai under Azamgarh’s Nizamabad thana. One of the parties phoned the police.
The Nats are traditionally rope dancers.
When the police reached the village, the two parties were pelting stones at each other. This was filmed by the police. Upon seeing the police the two parties stopped their argument.
After this, as per the report released by the Rihai Manch, the police started hitting members of the warring parties and others, who had nothing to do with the argument, with batons. Women and children, too, were not sparred. According to the report, 35 people were injured and this included 18 women and 10 children.
Among the villagers, the men managed to flee and so women bore the greater brunt of the police’s anger.
Gorki, one of the victims quoted in the report, said that the police entered her home and hit her head. “They also grabbed my chest,” she told the six-member fact finding committee headed by Rihai Manch general secretary Rajeev Yadav. Gorki’s age is listed around 30.
Asma, an underage victim, said that the police caught her by the hair as she tried to run towards her house.
Another elderly man Kitabu was in the village with his five months pregnant daughter-in-law Farida. “We were unconcerned as the quarrel in the village did not involve us. However the police beat me with rods and also kicked my daughter-in-law in the stomach”.
Haris, a 12-year-old boy, has been quoted in the report as saying that he was forced to the ground and repeatedly kicked. He has been unable to pass urine without difficulty since.
After beating up the villagers, the police also took many among them to the thana. However, no report was written against the people involved in the original argument which had caused the police to come to the village.
The report also says that no medical investigation of the beaten people was conducted and no treatment provided.
