The violence in Mathura has suddenly brought “Swadhin Bharat”, an outfit claiming allegiance to Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, into the spotlight.
At the centre of the controversy is the head of the group, Ramvriksh Yadav, a man in his early 70s, whose followers blatantly used violence to illegally occupy Jawahar Bagh and scare away locals and government officials from the area.
According to administrative officials, Yadav came to Mathura with a few hundred of his supporters in April 2014. The group had started from Sagar district of Madhya Pradesh and was planning to reach Jantar Mantar in Delhi to hold a protest. Jawahar Bagh, a Forest Department land, was supposed to be a brief halt for “Swadhin Bharat”, going by the official permission given to them in April 2014, but the group made the park its “home.”
“Ramvriksh Yadav and his group literally made Jawahar Bagh their official headquarters. Soon, the group started becoming bigger, but almost all the members were outsiders,” said an official.
According to the office-bearers of the Forest Department, the cult evicted them from their office in Jawahar Bagh.
Yogesh Khatri, a local journalist who followed “Swadhin Bharat”, said he got several threats from the members of the group for reporting on the violence they had used to capture that space inside Jawahar Bagh. “They even announced a prize money of Rs. 1,00,000 to the person who could take me to them,” Mr. Khatri told The Hindu.
15 FIRs lodged
As many as 15 FIRs have been lodged against this group at Sadar police station.
“If somebody went inside the park, they used to capture them. And if someone was seen near the gate of Jawahar Bagh, they used to beat up the person. They led a severe attack on the employees of the subdivision office because our union had registered an FIR against their illegal activities,” said an employee of the Sadar subdivision.
