By IANS,
Bhopal : At least 48 people, including two policemen, were injured Friday in the annual daylong Gotmaar Mela which the authorities in Madhya Pradesh’s Chhindwara district were unable to stop despite a ban on the ritual stone hurling at one another.
The administration banned the ritual following directives of the state Human Rights Commission and offered the participants its full support in holding any other cultural and religious event.
Last year the ritual claimed a man’s life and left over 400 injured.
Describing the tradition of stone throwing as “inhuman and criminal”, the Madhya Pradesh Human Rights Commission (MPHRC) directed the district administration not to allow it henceforth.
The district administration has put in place heavy security to prevent the ritual but the situation slipped out of control soon after the fair started Friday morning.
The frenzied participants started attacking the administration officials and policemen.
“As soon as the festival started and villagers from both sides came to know that they would not be allowed to hurl stones at one another, they started pelting stones at the policemen and their vehicles. Two constables received minor injuries,” said Chhindwara District Collector Nikunj Srivastava.
“Our motive was not to suppress people but to reform and educate them that what they have been doing since ages was wrong. And we have succeeded in it in the sense that the use of liquor by the participants was almost negligible and they did not use slings to pelt stones or the injuries would have been on a larger scale,” Srivastava told IANS.
“As against hundreds being injured every year in the past, this time the number of injured has gone down to 48. They include two policemen,” he added.
This is not the first time that the administration has tried to stop the ritual and failed. To contain the number of injured in the festival, the administration introduced rubber balls instead of stones in 2001 and 2002, but participants switched back to stones in 2003.
The Gotmaar festival is celebrated every year on the day after the new moon in Bhadrapad month of the Hindu calendar. During the festival, men from Pandhurna and Sawargaon villages, located on opposite banks of the river Jamna in Chhindwara district, about 400 km from here, hurl stones at one another.