Skip to main content

Chhara community "attacked" in Ahmedabad, police "beat up" men, women and children

Screenshot of a video shot by a Chharanagar resident
By A Representative
Senior human rights activist Shabnam Hashmi has sounded alert over the alleged sudden midnight police attack on a colony of a denotified tribe colony of Ahmedabad, ccharas. Quoting senior theatre and film director of Budhan theatre Dakxin Chhara and a number of other activists, she said, "According to the information available, there was some altercation between a few chhara boys, who were drunk at night, and they had some fight with policemen on duty."
"Police returned around midnight in full force -- hundreds of them from what I have been told by a number of local activists -- attacked the cchara colony, breaking vehicles, cars, getting into people's homes, breaking whatever they could lay hands on, attacking men, women and children, even media and lawyers who tried to intervene", said in a media alert.
She added, "Dakxin himself has been beaten up, his old mother-in-law has been attacked. Another theatre actor Atish Indrekar was also attacked and taken away. He objected to police attacking people and breaking his bike... None of the political leaders are available -- their phones are either switched off or out of range. I called the CP Ahmedabad twice he didn't pick up."
A media source added: As many as 50 cars have been ransacked at Chharanagar in Ahmedabad, a ghetto of the denotified chhara tribe. Women were beaten up. There were over 500 cops who crashed inside people's houses and beat them. 
Three people, including a woman, who were assaulted by cops were taken to the Civil Hospital in 108 emergency van. Even complainants were detained at the Civil Hospital and taken to the police station. Theatre artistes and press photographers among are the people who have been detained.

Comments

TRENDING

Ahmedabad world’s least climate resilient major city: AlphaGeo study

By Rajiv Shah  A new study has ranked Ahmedabad as the least climate-resilient major city in the world , highlighting a dangerous gap between the city’s extreme physical vulnerability to climate hazards and its capacity to adapt. Cited by The New York Times , the analysis, conducted by geospatial artificial intelligence firm AlphaGeo , places the Indian city at the top of a list of global urban centres most exposed to climate risk.

Swami Vivekananda's views on caste and sexuality were 'painfully' regressive

By Bhaskar Sur* Swami Vivekananda now belongs more to the modern Hindu mythology than reality. It makes a daunting job to discover the real human being who knew unemployment, humiliation of losing a teaching job for 'incompetence', longed in vain for the bliss of a happy conjugal life only to suffer the consequent frustration.

PIL seeks suspension of school-based HPV vaccination over consent violations

By A Representative   The Universal Health Organisation (UHO) has filed a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) before the Supreme Court of India seeking judicial intervention to ensure that the country's nationwide Human Papillomavirus (HPV) Vaccination Programme complies with constitutional guarantees of informed consent , bodily autonomy, transparency, and accountability.