By IANS,
New Delhi : The hurling of a slipper at arrested former chief of the Commonwealth Games Organising Committee Suresh Kalmadi is the latest in a series of similar attacks – with footwear or in extreme cases a knife – on well-known personalities by disgruntled people to vent their anger.
In Tuesday’s case, Kapil Thakur, an unemployed man from Madhya Pradesh, flung a slipper at Kalmadi as he was entering the Patiala House court premises after his arrest a day earlier by the Central Bureau of Investigation for alleged financial irregularities in the granting of contracts for the October 2010 Games.
Thakur first tried to break the police cordon around Kalmadi, and when he failed, chucked a slipper.
Similarly, on March 24, 2011 yoga guru Baba Ramdev had a close shave when a Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) trooper, Mitu Singh Rathore, hurled his boot at him angered by his long speech on corruption instead of on yoga at a camp in Nagpur. Rathore was a follower of the yoga lessons of Ramdev.
In April 7, 2009, a Sikh journalist, Jarnail Singh, from Hindi daily Dainik Jagran threw a shoe at union Home Minister P. Chidambaram who was speaking with journalists at the Congress headquarters in New Delhi. However, the shoe did not hit the minister.
Singh was miffed at the CBI’s clean chit to Congress leader Jagdish Tytler in the 1984 anti-Sikh riots case and wanted to debate the issue with Chidambaram, who refused.
Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah was also targeted on Aug 15, 2010 when a suspended police constable, Abdulla Ahad Jaan hurled a shoe at him during the Independence Day celebrations in Srinagar.
The police said that Jaan was mentally unsound and had a case of extortion filed against him.
However, there have been some cases where the attacks were violent, threatening the life of the victim.
On Feb 8, 2010 former Haryana DGP S.P.S. Rathore, convicted in the Ruchika Girhotra molestation case, was attacked and seriously injured when a young man posing as a journalist stabbed him thrice in the face with a pocket knife outside a court in Chandigarh.
The assailant identified as 29-year-old Utsav Sharma, a resident of Varanasi in Uttar Pradesh, was said to be suffering from a psychological problem – termed “mood disorder syndrome”.
On Jan 25, 2011 Sharma repeated the act. This time he attacked Rajesh Talwar, father of murdered teen, Aarushi, outside a Ghaziabad court attacking him with a sharp edged cleaver.
The attack left Talwar bleeding profusely as he suffered injuries to his face and hand.