New Delhi/Balasore: Two Railway Protection Force (RPF) personnel were suspended on the charges of thrashing and kicking a differently-abled man at the platform no-4 of the Balasore railway station.
ASI H Choudhury and constable PK Rout were suspended by Maheshwar Singh, the senior divisional security commissioner of RPF in Kharagpur, over an order for probe by Union railway minister Suresh Prabhu.
The information about the suspension came into light through a twitter post by Prabhu, who had Sunday directed the Director General of RPF to investigate the matter after a video clip of the incident was aired on news channels.
“I had taken immediate cognizance of the case, had ordered enquiry. Subsequently two RPF personnel responsible have been put under suspension,” Prabhu tweeted. The suspended personnel were on train escort duty at the time of the incident, Railways officials said.
Action was taken after three personnel from Balasore RPF who were on platform duty on that day were summoned by the Railways authorities at Kharagpur and interrogated, they said.
While locals alleged that the man was assaulted by RPF personnel January 3 on a platform, local officials of the RPF had claimed they had no information about the incident and had not received any complaints regarding it.
Both RPF and Government Railway Police (GRP) of Balasore said they had no knowledge about such an incident.
The incident which took place January 3 came to light Saturday after a video clipping of the murky episode, recorded by a social activist, went viral. The video evoked sharp criticism from various quarters.
The policemen were reported to have ill-treated the disabled man in full view of the public suspecting the person of committing theft.
According to reports, Tribhandrum-Guwahati Express passed the station at about 7.31am Tuesday when the RPF personnel received a complaint of theft from some passengers in the train. Later, it was found that three RPF men were dragging a differently-abled person from the train inhumanly.
The policemen allegedly broke his crutches, kicked his back and thrashed him while hundreds of passengers stood mute spectators.
Parthasarathi Jena, a social activist of Balia, had recorded the scene with the help of cell phone. The policemen had tried to snatch the phone from Jena, but he managed to escape from them. PNN
