Bhubaneswar, September 8: Congress leader Jadgish Tytler, who is the party's in-charge of Odisha, has been booked for criminal conspiracy for the clashes that broke out outside the state Assembly during a protest by Congress workers in Bhubaneswar on Thursday. Several protesters as well as 60 police personnel were injured in these clashes. And a woman cop was beaten up by a mob on the rampage. So far, 35 people have been arrested in this connection.
Pramila Padhi, the 39-year-old from the Bhubaneswar City Police who was thrashed by the mob, has alleged that she was attacked after Mr Tytler called for barricades to be broken. "I was trying to persuade people to stay calm when 30 to 40 of them caught hold of me, dragged me along and even molested me. They kicked and beat me up. They attacked me as soon as Jagdish Tytler called on party workers to break the barricades," the woman cop reportedly told the Press Trust of India.
Ms Padhi is currently at a private hospital battling shock and trauma apart from bruises all over.
Yesterday, the Congress apologised for the assault on the woman cop, but insisted that not all the thousands of people present during the protest were Congressmen.
"We are sorry that the woman cop got injured," Mr Tytler said, but quickly added that "there are two sides to the story. Our people have also been injured. The cops attacked us first. "
On Thursday, a crowd of more than 25,000 protesters - who Congress MLA Bhupinder Singh now says were not all party workers but also "included unemployed youth, agitating teachers and auto-rickshaw drivers unhappy with new rules" - tried to storm the Assembly to demand the resignation of Chief Minister Navin Patnaik for what they allege is his involvement in the coal block allocation scam that has rocked Parliament as well.
Prohibitory orders had been imposed which the protesters defied. As the mob broke through one of the barricades, the cops used tear gas to control the situation. Several protesters as well as 60 policemen were injured in the clashes that followed.
Ms Padhi, in uniform, was on duty near the Congress Bhavan when the clashes began; she was a deployed to guard a woman Congress leader, and not to control the crowd. Local TV channels showed footage of protesters thrashing Ms Padhi with bamboo sticks as she lay on the ground trying to protect herself. Eyewitnesses said she fell on to the ground after people surrounded her during the clashes and then one of the men kicked her.
Various police organisations had yesterday demanded that Congress leaders Jagadish Tytler, who was leading the protest, and Niranjan Patnaik be arrested within 48 hours for provoking the violence. "We will be otherwise forced to go for a ceasework agitation," they had warned. Along with Mr Tytler, Mr Patnaik and several others have also been booked others for criminal conspiracy under Section 120 ( B ) of the Indian Penal Code.
The Congress has accused the police of violating the law by hitting people on their heads. "They should have targeted only those who jumped over the barricade instead of launching attacks on the stage erected for the rally," Bhupinder Singh said.
But Bhubaneswar Police Commissioner Sunil Roy said television footage clearly shows that the protesters threw stones at policemen around the time the last speeches were delivered by Congress leaders. The police, he said, used utmost restraint in using water canons and tear gas shells to disperse the crowd. But the mob kept coming back to attack the policemen and it was then that they decided to chase them away, he said. Mr Roy said the Congress leaders who had organised the rally would be taken to task for violating the conditions of the licence granted to them to hold a "peaceful rally and demonstration".
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