Railway Protection Force (RPF) personnel were caught on camera mercilessly beating up a physically-challenged man at the Baleswar railway station.
In the video clip, three policemen and another man are seen hitting the man with their boots with the victim lying on the ground on platform No-4 with his crutches.
The incident came to the fore after Parthasarathi Jena, a social worker from the Balia area here, captured the inhuman incident on his mobile phone and shared it with media.
By seeing Jena shooting, the uniformed personnel asked him to delete the visuals, telling him that the man was trying to steal a mobile phone of a woman passenger in a running train.
“They threatened me and asked for my mobile phone and then asked me to delete the visual. When I posed myself as a journalist, they left me,” Jena said.
The man was pulled out from a Guwahati-bound train at the railway station on January 3 morning on the charge of mobile phone theft in train.
The disturbing incident took place in full public glare and the people present nearby remained mute spectators.
Sources said the victim, an orphan, earns his livelihood by sweeping train bogies between the Baleswar and Bhadrak stations.
A mobile phone was recovered from his possession and he was handed over to RPF jawans, reports said.
While the videoed incident has gone viral on social media platforms, Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu has directed the RPF DG to probe into the matter. Neither the RPF nor the GRP in Baleswar owned the responsibility. They said they had no knowledge of such an occurrence.
The rifle slinging in the shoulders of one of the personnel and brown shoes and further their Hindi speaking suggest that they could belong to the RPF.
“It suggests that they were escort personnel of a running train. No man of our RPF unit is involved,” said local RPF Officer-in-Charge Radhashyam Yadav.
local GRP IIC Pratap Chandra Behera said, “I was away from Baleswar on a training programme. I have no knowledge. Our men don’t carry arms.”
An inquiry into the incident has been ordered by the SP Railway, Cuttack, Sanjay Kausal, who said, “I have sought a report from the Inspector-in-Charge of GRP, Baleswar.
Social activist Jayant Das said, “For such an inhuman and barbaric act, the culprits must be punished. It is gross human rights violation. Those responsible must be brought to book immediately.”