New Delhi:Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal accused the city’s police on Monday of terrorising protesters after a video of them belting college students with sticks went viral.
The students staged a protest on Saturday over the suicide of Rohith Vermula, a young Dalit scholar who had been suspended by his university in Hyderabad.
The video shows the police hovering around the placard-waving and chanting students before suddenly beating them with wooden sticks and their fists.
The students are heard screaming and running away as police chase them, with some grabbing protesters by the hair and pinning them to the ground.
“There was no warning. I was standing near the police and all I heard was ‘one, two, three charge’,” said independent journalist Rahul, whose camera was allegedly smashed. Rahul said when he tried to retrieve his camera, “they pushed lathis into my stomach.”
Remarkably, despite the video playing on television channels all day, police chief BS Bassi told NDTV that he has not seen the footage but that an inquiry has been ordered. Among the assaulters were civilians who have not yet been identified, he said.
The protests took place outside the headquarters of the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh or RSS, the ideological parent of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s BJP. “Why were they protesting outside the RSS headquarters?” asked RSS ideologue Sanjeev Uniyal.
Mr Kejriwal, who has regularly accused the police of sycophantic steadfastness in acting on behalf of the BJP, said the cops had behaved like “a private army”.
A month before he killed himself, Mr Vemula was suspended along with four other students for allegedly assaulting the head of the BJP’s student wing -a charge the group has denied. Mr Vemula was found hanging in his hostel earlier this month, triggering a national debate on caste discrimination at campuses.