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CRPF assaults Shaurya Chakra winner
Josy Joseph in New Delhi |
April 09, 2004 18:34 IST
Around 10 Central Reserve Police Force personnel on duty outside the United States embassy in New Delhi assaulted a decorated army officer for nearly an hour on Thursday.
The colonel, who received a Shaurya Chakra a few years back for his services in Kashmir, was kicked in the groin, beaten with rifle butts and lathis, and even called a terrorist.
The CRPF and army seem to have buried the case, and the police say they are not investigating the incident because they have not been asked to.
The CRPF has quietly moved out the men who carried out the morning attack, while the army says it has no comments to make.
Meanwhile, the colonel, a Special Forces officer, is under treatment at a military hospital.
The officer, who reportedly suffered injuries to his head, hands and chest, has almost a dozen stitches in one of his ears.
According to witnesses and police sources, he was bashed up for running on the pavement next to Panchsheel Marg, near the embassy.
He was jogging towards Shantipath when a CRPF constable forced him to stop. One of his colleagues joined him in admonishing the colonel and within minutes the verbal exchange turned into an assault.
According to the sources, calling him a terrorist and asking him where he had hidden RDX, the CRPF men pinned him to the ground and beat him with rifle butts and lathis.
Later they pulled him to their tent, where some more men joined them.
One of the assaulters shouted at the colonel that he was treated badly when he went for a course at the Indian Military Academy.
Later, some representatives from the army headquarters and the commanding officer of the CRPF's 13 Battalion, of which the unit outside the embassy is a part, landed up.
The two parties went to Chanakyapuri Police Station, where they gave a written undertaking that they would amicably settle the issue.
The fact that the men were on duty outside the US embassy seems to have rattled everyone involved in the case. In fact, a police officer requested rediff.com not to give wide publicity to the issue because "it involves America".