India Shining: Police personnel go on rampage in Sundargarh

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Police personnel go on rampage in Sundargarh


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Susim C Sahani | Sundargarh


Tension prevailed here after the personnel of the Orissa State Armed Police on Sunday, who were enraged over the assault of two their colleagues by some unidentified youth on Saturday afternoon, went berserk at the bus stand here and brutally assaulted the public, shopkeepers and scribes who tried to capture their vandalism on camera.



Sources said the OSAP personnel numbering about 150 came in nearly 40 motorbikes led by Havildar Association president Babul Bal, three each on each bike violating the traffic rules they are supposed to enforce. At the bus stand they allegedly attacked OTV scribe Satyabarata Jena and snatched his camera while he was capturing the footage of the police personnel downing the shutters of shops and thrashing the people present there. Similarly, they attacked ETV scribe Harihar Das Mahapatra at Stadium Square and snatched his camera and damaged it. They also took away his SD memory card in which exclusive visuals of the mayhem were stored. Mahapatra's arm was twisted and forefinger was profusely bleeding. They even had the audacity to threaten him publicly that he would be bumped off.

Both the injured scribes have filed FIRs with the Town police and alleged that Binoo alias Prabhat Tripathy had attacked them. When Rourkela scribe of ETV Pramod Panda asked Reserve Inspector Durbasa Nayak about the incident, he said on camera, "You cannot do anything."

After getting information District Superintendent of Police S Praveen Kumar rushed to the spot and took stock of the situation. He publicly apologised to the people and the scribes. He told the journalists, "I am behind you and ready to compensate the damages."

Then only the flaring tempers of the public cooled down. Meanwhile, the Sundargarh Citizens' Forum has demanded that the culprits should be booked and stringent action taken against them, otherwise the people would take to the streets.

They also said that the police vandalism would alienate the people from the cops in the Maoist-affected district.