Mohammed Abid Hasan, a resident of Saharanpur, has several wounds on his leg. “The police beat me over and over again on the area where the rod has been set,” Mr. Hasan said while displaying other wounds on his body.
Mr. Hasan and other people residing in the area near the Qutub Sher Police Station — the place where the communal violence started on Saturday morning — said that the PAC and Rapid Action Force (RAF) personnel plundered the area after curfew was imposed in the city.
Video footage captured on the mobile by a resident showed some police personnel loitering in the empty streets in the area. Tauheed Khan, another resident who owns an automobile store in the area, alleged that the police were plundering the shops.
The video footage, which was unclear, showed a building where there was a fire on Saturday afternoon. Though the people who set the fire could not be identified through the video, residents said that they had to rescue 14 people from the building, which, allegedly, was burnt by the police.
The members of the Gurdwara Prabandhak Committee blamed the members of another religious community involved in a land dispute with them for the plundering of their property.
However, residents of the area near the gurdwara alleged that security forces, and not any other community, were responsible for the burning of vehicles and houses in the area. Jathedar of Akal Takht, Giani Gurbachan Singh who visited the gurdwara, said, “We shouldn’t indulge in actions that would bear repercussions for different communities residing in the area.”
He blamed the authorities for not being able to stop the communal violence on time.
The dispute was over a land where the Gurdwara Prabandhak Committee was building an extension to the main building of the gurdwara. While the members of the committee claimed that the land belonged to them, some locals said Askari Mosque was built on the land in the past, so, the place could not be used by the Gurdwara Prabandhak Committee.
