At around 5.30 pm, police came to know that around 100-150 people had blocked a road near the Atwara police outpost seeking release of the four. Police also came to know that several vehicles with people coming back from the PM’s rally were stuck due to the blockade.
HEAD Constable Suresh Vats, 49, died on Saturday after being hit by a stone by a mob in Nonhahara police station area of Ghazipur, hours after Prime Minister Narendra Modi addressed a rally in the district.
Police said protesters belonging to the Nishad Party had blocked a road demanding release of four of their party workers, who had been arrested earlier in the day for staging a protest. When a police team reached to remove the blockade near the Atwara police outpost, the protesters started pelting stones, leading to injuries to five, including Vats.
The Head Constable was rushed to hospital, where he died during treatment. The other four injured, who are in a stable condition, include two police constables and two civilians. A native of Pratapgarh district, Vats was posted at Karimuddinpur police station in Ghazipur. Nine persons have so far been detained in connection with Vats’s death, Inspector General of Police, Varanasi Range, Vijay Singh Meena said. This is the second incident this month of a policeman dying in a mob attack in Uttar Pradesh. On December 3, Inspector Subodh Kumar Singh had been killed in Bulandshahr district by protesters angry over alleged cow slaughter.
The Ghazipur incident took place around 14 km from where the PM’s rally was held, Meena said. First, in the afternoon, Nishad Party workers blocked a road in protest, following which four people were arrested and booked under Section 151 of the CrPC (breach of peace). While the reason for the protest was not known, the IGP said, “We recovered a pamphlet from the protest site in which a demand for reservation was mentioned.”
