Policemen were seen beating mercilessly beating people inside a house.
Patna:
A power plant being built in Bihar’s Buxar district was overrun by angry locals, who also set a police van on fire on Wednesday after a violent crackdown on their protest against it in the middle of the night.
In chilling police brutality that would have made the British East India Company proud, dozens of policemen raided farmers sleeping in their homes and beat them up viciously with canes in the middle of the night. The assault was caught on camera.
The police crackdown was against a group of farmers who had been on protest for over two months, demanding better rates for their land being acquired by a state-run power company in the district’s Chausa block, the residents of Banarpur village, around 140 km west of Patna, have said.
The police said they were attacked by the farmers first, a claim that the farmers have denied. In CCTV footage released by the farmers, the group of policemen are seen milling outside one of the homes before launching the assault.
Cellphone video recorded by those getting attacked inside one of the houses showed policemen mercilessly beating people, including women, and breaking down doors.
The farmers said the attack was led by Amit Kumar, a senior officer at the Mufassil police station, who was responding to a complaint filed by the SJVN power plant.
The police are yet to explain why they had gone to respond to a complaint against a demonstration at midnight after the farmers had gone home.
This morning, a mob armed with sticks and stones raided the power plant and clashed with the police, setting one of their vehicles on fire. Four policemen have been injured, and the police fired warning shots to control the crowd, Hindi newspaper Dainik Bhaskar reported.
The farmers said, before the midnight, raid they had been protesting peacefully against the company for a new round of land acquisition for the project at rates decided some 12 years ago when plots were last purchased.
SJVN, formerly known as the Satluj Jal Vidyut Nigam, began construction of a 1320 MW coal power plant in the area last year.
