J&K cops ‘offered urine for water’ to Ekta yatris

When separatist leader Yasin Malik and others marched to Lal Chowk with black flags, the police offered them hot tea and cigarettes. But we were arrested for trying to hoist the National Flag… When we asked for water, the police offered us urine.”

Dozen of BJP youth wing workers who have returned to the Capital — with fractured limbs and numerous wounds — narrated the story of brutality unleashed by the Jammu & Kashmir Police in Srinagar on January 26.

These youth leaders had to sneak into Srinagar and hide in small groups to continue with the plan to hoist the National Flag at Lal Chowk, after threats by separatists and prohibitory orders by the State administration.

While Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha (BJYM) chief Anurag Thakur and BJP leaders were arrested upon entering Jammu & Kashmir, a couple of youth wing workers made an attempt on January 26 morning to hoist the flag at Lal Chowk.

KK Upadhyay, an engineer from Gurgaon, was the first who tried. He was beaten up. The next group of workers came as close as 20 metres from Lal Chowk. No sooner did one of them take the flag out of his pocket and wave it, that several policemen pounced on him, snatched away the flag, tore it (the National Flag) into pieces and beat him up, fracturing his left hand in the process.

“J&K Police personnel were carrying posters — ‘Indian dogs, go back’. The arrested BJP activists were forced to take off their clothes in sub-zero temperatures. Third degree torture was meted out. Does Prime Minister Manmohan Singh have any explanation for this kind of an action? He should apologise to the nation,” Anurag Thakur told The Pioneer on Friday.

Bhrigu Bakshipatra, Rajesh Chowdhary, Mohan Reddy, Suresh Bagashia (office-bearers), Shyantanam Basu (executive member), Jitendra Meena, Virendra S Khinchi, Lokinder Singh Rajawat, Vijay Upadhyay, Vinod Rawat, Bhupinder Chowdhary, Ashok Bhati (from Rajasthan), RP Singh, Shikha Rai, Hiren Mishra (from Delhi), Pradeep Singh Vaghela, Harsh Sanghavi, Alpesh Sashikant (from Gujarat) and Jitendra Gupta (from West Bengal) had to be admitted to a local hospital after they received serious injuries in a police lathicharge.

The State Police, Thakur said, not only tortured party workers but also used obscenities against the BJP national leaders. Maintaining that his yatra was a success – as party workers managed to hoist the flag so close to Lal Chowk despite police cordoning off the area – Thakur said his next plan was to reach out to the people, students in particular, and expose the UPA’s pro-separatist polices.

“We have been successful in our endeavor to excite and rejuvenate India’s youth into proactively taking the cause of national integration and sovereignty,” he said.

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