The township of Pimpri-Chinchwad in Pune remained tense on Thursday noon following a free-for-all between a group of irate villagers and Army engineers, forcing the police to resort to lathicharge and lob teargas shells to quell the fracas.
Residents of Bopkhel village were vehemently protesting against the denial of access to a road that passes through the premises of the College of Military Engineering (CME) sited at Dapodi in the precincts of Pimpri.
An angry mob, that was trying to force its way through the CME gate, got into a scuffle with some army engineers. The then began pelting stones at police vans. Some villagers and policemen were injured in the melee.
The nub of the issue is the closure of the 2.25 km Bopkhel-Dapodi road a week ago by defence authorities at the CME following a Bombay High Court order.
With the defence authorities citing “security of the CME campus” as a prime concern, the decision has affected around 20,000 residents of Bopkhel in the Pimpri-Chinchwad Municipal Corporation township limits as the road was the shortest route linking the village to the Pune-Mumbai highway stretch in Dapodi.
As a consequence of the court order, commuters were forced to take a detour of 20 km to reach their destinations – a grind particularly hard on students and IT professionals residing in the area.
The CME has however agreed to keep the route open to villagers in case of dire medical emergencies with the caveat that they would be escorted by army personnel.
A petition filed by a resident failed to pass muster at a court hearing as he was unable to prove the 2.25 km stretch a ‘public road’.
Despite the police asserting the situation was under control, security has been beefed up around the CME campus and the Dapodi area to precluded any violent disturbances.
