For many, it was miraculous escape from death
PrashantNews
For more than two dozen police and administrative officials including women, it was a miraculous escape from the death in the violence-hit Banbhulpura area of Haldwani town in Uttarakhand.
As the violence began flaring up in these areas of Haldwani in Nainital district on Thursday night, a group of women police personnel hid themselves in a house before being rescued by the police force.
SDM Haldwani Rekha Kohli also made a daring escape from the violence-hit areas where patrol bombs were thrown freely as the tension mounted.
The women personnel narrated their harrowing experiences to the media on Friday. “For nearly two hours we remained holed up inside a house in the violence hit area. The mobsters tried their best to barge inside the house but they failed. We asked the higher authorities to send the police force for taking us out of the area,” a woman constable, who was injured in the incident, said.
Similarly, an unruly mob torched Banbhulpura police station where more than a dozen police and administrative officials were present. District Magistrate Vandana Singh said the mob began torching the police station where a magistrate and some police officials were present. First the mob pelted stones on the police station and later attacked it with petrol bombs. As the fire spread, the officials inside the police station started feeling suffocation. Singh said the mob also fired gunshots on the police station.
Most of the vehicles parked in and outside the police station were set on fire. It became very difficult for the administration to rescue these officials from the police station. A big police force was sent with a warning to rescue these officials from the burnt police station.
“It was a planned and unprovoked attack by the mob on police personnel,” said the Nainital District Magistrate commenting on the violence. “This was not a communal incident and should not be made communal,” she said.
The mob also tried to disturb peace in the nearby Gandhinagar area but the attempt was foiled.
This type of mob violence are part of anti nationalists strategies to disable government machinery. Such incidents should be curbed with heavy hands, so that such incidents should not be repeated in future.