What comes as a surprise amid the reports of district administration’s high handedness witnessed during the demolition of houses and shops of Muslims at Khargone City in Madhya Pradesh is the prejudiced attitude of the police personnel who never even spared the fellow Muslim employees of their own department from their brutality.
According to reports, when the local police was busy in handing a collective punishments by pulling down the houses and shops of the Muslims – accused of taking part in stone pelting on Ram Navami procession, some fellow Muslim employees living in the area too were subjected to police brutality regardless of their association with the same department.
“When I stepped out of my house to know what was actually happening in the neighbourhood, one of the police constables deployed there approached me in an abusive way. Though, I asked him that I too belong to the same department with a rank of SI, he lent no ear to me and abusively asked me to go back. “Tere SI ki aisi ki tesi…’ (To hell with your SI rank), the constable said before hitting me black and blue with the stick,” said the victim while showing his grievous injuries on almost all parts of the body.
“Over 100 miscreants were seen pelting stones at our houses and shops. Even one of my neighbours called Anil also started abusing me with filthy language while I kept advising him to behave like a good neighbour as we have to live in the area side by side with peace and harmony. However, he keep on spewing filth on me and urged the miscreants to set my house ablaze calling it only Muslim house in the locality,” recall the avuncular victim.
“Some of them even thrown petrol bomb on our houses, he said holding the left over burned plastic bottles thrown by the bhagva miscreants.” Showing the charred vehicles owned by his sons in front of his house which were set ablaze in the arsenal on the fateful day, the victim said, “No FIR has been registered so far in the case.”
Refuting the allegation of the district administration that houses and shops were demolished only of those people involved in rioting during the Ram Navami procession, another victim said, “Generally it was a Sunday and our medical shop too was closed on the holiday. However, despite having no FIR on our names as accused, our shops were also demolished by the district administration.”
