Police lathicharge: Congress demands probe

BHUBANESWAR: The Orissa Pradesh Congress Committee (OPCC) and the State unit of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) have demanded a judicial probe into the police lathicharge on servitors at Puri on Monday even as Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik expressed concern over the incident. He said that appropriate action would be taken against the guilty. After a high-level meeting with the Chief Minister at the Secretariat in the evening, Director-General of Police (DGP) Manmohan Praharaj said that steps had been taken to ensure that such incidents do not recur in future. State BJP president Jual Oram has described the incident as unprecedented and a black chapter in the history of Rath Yatra. A team led by Oram rushed to Puri and discussed the situation with the servitors. Oram said lack of coordination between the temple administration and servitors resulted in such an incident. Demanding strong action against the police personnel involved in the incident, Oram said that a committee should be constituted to recommend measures to avoid such incidents in future.  Condemning the police action on servitors and temple police, OPCC spokesman Arjya Kumar Gyanendra alleged that during the tenure of Naveen Patnaik,  police excesses had crossed all limits. There is an unwritten code that police should not misbehave with any devotee during the Rath Yatra, Gyanendra said, adding that this was flouted everywhere on Sunday during the pulling of chariots and the next day, when the servitors were lathicharged. Former Puri MLA Uma Ballav Rath has also condemned the police lathicharge on the servitors and the devotees. Rath alleged that there was no high ranking police or administrative official when the incident took place in front of the Gundicha temple.Though it was decided at the Rath Yatra Coordination Committee meeting that police personnel with the chariots would not carry lathis, they were seen wielding them. Demanding a judicial probe into the incident, Rath said that the district collector and superintendent of police should be asked to keep away from the Rath Yatra duty.