By IANS,
Bhopal : Taking serious note of the Dindori police firing incident in which three people were killed, the Madhya Pradesh government has suspended two officials for alleged dereliction of duty, official sources said Thursday.
The incident occurred Tuesday evening in Parsel village of Dindori district, over 350 km from here, when authorities sought to disperse a mob which was blockading a road demanding that an advocate, Narain Padwar, missing for the past two months, be traced.
The officers suspended are Sub Divisional Officer police (SDOP) J.P. Uikey and Sub Divisional Magistrate (SDM) R.P. Tripathi. “SDOP J.P. Uikey and SDM R.P. Tripathi were suspended on the charge of laxity in discharging their duty,” a state government official told IANS.
Sources said that advocate Narain Padwar had been missing for the past two months and a missing person’s report was filed. In the belief that the police were not making any effort to look for him, the villagers resorted to a road blockade Tuesday.
However, when the police reached the agitation site to disperse the mob, the agitators allegedly threw stones at the cops injuring about a dozen of them.
This provoked the police to first cane-charge the mob and when this failed, they fired in the air to disperse the crowd. “The police had gone to the village to disperse those staging the road blockade but they indulged in stone pelting in which many policemen were injured. The police first took recourse to cane charge and then fired in the air,” Additional Police Superintendent R.S. Bhadoria said.
“However, when the locals did not relent and turned violent, the police had to open fire in which three people were injured who later died in hospital,” Bhadoria added.
A magisterial inquiry has been ordered to look into the case and Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan has announced an ex-gratia amount of Rs.1 lakh to the dependents of each of the deceased.
To protest the police firing the Congress on Wednesday called for a strike that remained peaceful.