Jharkhand cops open fire to save truck cleaner from mob in Giridh district
RANCHI: Police were forced to fire at a mob after lathi-charge failed to disperse angry men who were thrashing the cleaner of a truck on the suspicion of transporting beef at Bagodar in Jharkhand’s Giridih district.
Four policemen, including the officer in charge of Bagodar police station Naveen Kumar Singh, were injured in stone pelting by the mob, which gathered after an alarm raised by anti-social elements that the truck was transporting beef on Sunday.
According to Singh, the mob even tried to set ablaze the truck which was heading towards Uttar Pradesh from Kolkata carrying animal skeletons despite the hapless victim having all legal documents.
After the lynching of Tabrez Ansari, the police had launched an intensive awareness drive against hate crime to warn the people of the action on those found involved in such illegal activities, but Sunday’s attack showed little has changed.
“To save life of the cleaner, we had to open fire at the mob, which was not ready to hand over the cleaner to us. They had blocked the busy Grand Trunk (GT) Road for more than an hour due to which the vehicles queued up for several kilometres on both sides,” said Singh.
Four people were arrested so far.
“Two FIRs against 10 named and 150 unknown persons were registered for rioting, extortion and attacking police,” said Singh.
“Some people trailed the truck for some distance before intercepting it. The truck driver escaped leaving the truck, but the cleaner was caught and thrashed brutally,” the police officer said.