Teachers on way to Majithia’s house cane-charged
Monday, 04/08/2014
http://www.tribuneindia.com/2014/20140804/punjab.htm#1
Amritsar : Five persons, including a policeman, were injured when the police cane-charged members of the ETT Adhyapak Union (Zila Parishad) while they were heading to gherao the residence of Revenue Minister Bikram Singh Majithia here today.
Over the past few days, the union has been registering protests by trying to gherao the houses of various Cabinet Ministers in Punjab. They have been demanding merger of the 5,752 schools in the state being run under zila parishads with the Education Department.
The police rounded up about 15 protesting teachers and registered a case against them and unidentified members of the union.
Additional Deputy Commissioner of Police Parampal Singh claimed they resorted to lathicharge only when the protesters tried to march past the barricades. He said the teachers insisted on heading to the minister’s residence even as it was conveyed to them that Majithia was not at his house.
“The protesters were adamant and they attempted to break the barricades… Had the teachers been allowed to proceed to the residential locality where the minister lives, it would have created a law and order problem,” he said. He said the driver of a DSP sustained injury on his hand after being hit by a sharp-edged weapon.
The union, however, has denied its members used any sharp-edged weapon. They alleged that instead, the male policemen baton-charged and rounded up their female members, which was against the law. The police have refuted the claim.
The four teachers who sustained injuries were Pawanpreet Kaur, Manpreet Kaur, Lovepreet Singh and Gurpreet Singh.
It was around 10 am that ETT teachers from the six districts of Jalandhar, Kapurthala, Tarn Taran, Pathankot, Gurdaspur and Amritsar started converging upon Ram Bagh, which houses the summer palace of Maharaja Ranjit Singh.
The protesters then marched towards the posh Green Avenue where Majithia has his house. However, their march was stopped near the Maqbool road. Union patron Ranjit Singh Baath and district unit president Sudhir Dhand said they had been waiting for a response from the Deputy Commissioner to their demand for a meeting either with Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal or his deputy Sukhbir Badal. “We waited for three hours in sweltering and humid conditions outside the Deputy Commissioner’s residence, only to see our request being turned down. Akali Dal’s district president Upkar Singh Sandhu came to collect a memorandum from us, but we refused to hand it over to him,” the duo said.
The Clash
10:00 am: ETT teachers start gathering at Ram Bagh
12:10 pm: They start moving towards Majithia's house
12:40 pm: Are stopped near the Amritsar DC’s house
02:10 pm: The police cane-charge them as they try to break barricades
