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Two booked for inciting protesting Panchkula sanitation workers, allege MC vendetta
Vikas Manch members Rakesh Aggarwal and Devraj Sharma said the authorities were trying to subdue the voice of sanitation workers who are highlighting rampant corruption
Two members of Vikas Manch, a sanitation workers group, who had been booked for participating in an anti-corruption protest have come forward to allege wrongfully implicated and vedette being the driving force behind the FIRs against them.
Police on Saturday booked three persons, Manju, a door-to-door garbage collector, and two other members of Vikas Manch Rakesh Aggarwal and Devraj Sharma, for allegedly instigating garbage collectors for throwing garbage outside the municipal corporation (MC) office in Sector 14, causing public nuisance during Friday’s protest.
One of the accused, Rakesh Aggarwal said, “Upon arriving at the MC office to collect an RTI reply, the protest outside the MC building was already underway. We waited for a while, but did not receive the RTI reply. In the evening, we were told that a case has been registered against them.”
Alleging foul play, the 75-year-old man, “The FIR is baseless and false as nothing happened on the day. No one among us created a nuisance, no one misbehaved with any official and no one was stopped from entering the office.”
He further claimed that the authorities were trying to subdue members of the Vikas manch for their continued attempts to highlight corruption.
Sector 14 police station house officer (SHO) Ram Bhagat, meanwhile, said, “We have footage of them participating in the protest. I was present there and told them several times to not create nuisance, but they did not heed. They have been rightly booked and will be arrested also.”
Devraj Sharma, the other accused, added, “They are trying to protect the officials, whose names have appeared in the recent corruption cases.”
A case had been registered under sections 109 (abetting an offence), 183 (resistance to the taking of property by the lawful authority of a public servant), 283 (danger or obstruction in public way), 290 (public nuisance), 341 (wrongful restraint) and 353 (assault to deter public servant from discharge of his duty) of the Indian Penal Code.
