Sascha Wil­son

Af­ter two days of fiery protests in Bar­rack­pore over bad roads and wa­ter woes, res­i­dents are now claim­ing po­lice vic­tim­i­sa­tion.

This comes on the heels of the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port warn­ing that the po­lice are in­ves­ti­gat­ing and ap­pro­pri­ate le­gal ac­tion would be tak­en af­ter roads were dam­aged dur­ing the fiery protests ear­li­er this week.

Res­i­dent Kis­han Ma­haraj, who op­er­ates a busi­ness at his home, said po­lice searched sev­er­al homes in Bar­rack­pore and seized video footage on Tues­day.

He claimed that around 2 to 3 pm about 30 heav­i­ly armed po­lice of­fi­cers stormed his home with no war­rant in search of his DVR sys­tem.

Com­plain­ing that some of the of­fi­cers wore no masks, ig­nored the COVID-19 guide­lines and walked through his house with their dirty shoes, Ma­haraj is now fear­ful that he and his fam­i­ly, in­clud­ing his el­der­ly par­ents, have been ex­posed to the Coro­n­avirus.

Al­though the protests were close to his home, he said he did not par­tic­i­pate in the ac­tion.

He re­called, “When the po­lice came I told them they could take the record­ings but leave my cam­era and DVR. The of­fi­cers start­ed to buff me and rough up my 70-year-old fa­ther. They did not want to hear any­thing I had to say or any­one else had to say.”

He said the of­fi­cers re­mained at his home for about 20 min­utes.

“It was 20 min­utes of tor­ture we did not have any deal­ings with the po­lice we have no crim­i­nals liv­ing with us and we are not in­volved in any crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ties. I see protests all over the coun­try this is the first time in my life I see­ing the po­lice treat peo­ple so. I was not in­volved but I am in sup­port of my fel­low vil­lagers be­cause for far too long we have suf­fered and we have not got­ten any help with the bad roads and no wa­ter. I felt tar­get­ed and vic­timised and I don’t know if the po­lice are us­ing this to op­press we the poor peo­ple of Bar­rack­pore,” he claimed.

Ma­haraj claimed while the po­lice were “flash­ing around pa­pers” he was not shown a war­rant.

Say­ing that the po­lice act­ed as though a mur­der­er was liv­ing at his house, he said he de­cid­ed to stand up.

Say­ing that her law-abid­ing and hard-work­ing cit­i­zens, he said the vil­lagers were amazed by the po­lice’s ac­tions.

Ma­haraj said his lawyers have since writ­ten to the act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice about the mat­ter and ask­ing him to in­ter­vene.

“Be­cause we reach a state in this coun­try we are be­ing bul­lied. We can’t get a chance to do noth­ing, you can­not stand up for your rights or noth­ing so they may be us­ing this state of emer­gency to vic­timise peo­ple,” he said.

An­oth­er res­i­dent, who gave his name as Randy, said the po­lice con­duct­ed a road traf­fic ex­er­cise at Soumanie Trace and gave him a tick­et for not wear­ing a seat­belt.

Randy said he be­lieves he was tar­get­ed be­cause he was one of the pro­test­ers.

A se­nior po­lice source con­firmed that of­fi­cers ex­e­cut­ed war­rants at homes in Bar­rack­pore af­ter res­i­dents were hes­i­tant to com­ply with their re­quests for the footage.