BHUBANESWAR: Valentine’s Day was a smooth affair in Bhubaneswar on Thursday as the moral police was either absent or taken care of. Though the Bajrang Dal stayed away from playing spoilsport, it was Kalinga Sena, a fringe outfit, which had decided to hold agitations in front of parks and popular hang-outs in the City.
Even as the Kalinga Sena members were preparing to start a bike rally from Khandagiri, they were detained by police which whisked them away to an undisclosed location.“We detained 25 activists, including five women, when they had taken out a bike rally protesting the Valentine’s Day celebrations,” Khandagiri police station IIC Himanshu Bhusan Swain said. “They are in preventive custody and will be released later,” he added.
In a bid to refrain anti-socials from creating hooliganism, some parks like Jaydev Batika in Khandagiri area had voluntarily shut down. “We had not directed for the shut down of parks. Some of them were closed voluntarily by the officials of the park,” Bhubaneswar DCP Satyabrata Bhoi said, adding police force was deployed in the City to avoid any untoward incident.