CHENNAI: A 32-year-old woman developed seizures and fell unconscious inside the Flower Bazaar police station on Wednesday after being hit with a lathi by a sub-inspector. Her crime? She had allegedly ‘verbally abused’ the cop for evicting her brother’s shop from the pavement.
Kotteswaran, the sub-inspector in question, was patrolling along the NSC Bose Road at 11 am, when the incident happened. He was evicting the roadside fruit vendors as they did not follow social distancing norms. Tempers flared and one of the vendors, Gopi, picked up an argument with the cop. Bogged down by the lockdown, most roadside vendors in the country are on the brink of abject poverty. Thanks to the argument, the vendors were rounded up and taken to the police station.“Hearing that he was picked up, Gopi’s sister Kaveri rushed to the station,” says a police officer.
Officials say that Kaveri then verbally abused the cop “in front of other personnel and visitors”. They also say she used “vulgar words” at the officer despite several warnings. “The SI then lost his cool.”Subsequently, the ‘law enforcement’ personnel, who is bound to stop violence against women in his jurisdiction, followed all social distancing norms and struck Kaveri with his lathi.
“She was hit only once,” say policemen who witnessed the attack, “but she collapsed and developed a seizure.”The vendors and their kin soon gathered and protested against the police. As the Flower Bazaar inspector is on leave, Elephant Gate inspector D Rajakumar rushed to the spot and sent Kaveri to the Rajiv Gandhi government hospital -- a COVID-19 hotspot.
After a video taken of the attack taken by the vendors went viral, officials said a probe has been ordered on the incident. The tragic irony remains that there’s none to lodge a complaint -- not when shops were evicted, not when Gopi was taken to the station for ‘arguing’, and not when Kaveri was attacked.