Questions are being raised at various factors including a perceived failure of the police Intelligence network in view of the violent protest taking place during the laying foundation of waste treatment plant at Shishambada in Dehradun on Monday. The violent altercation also saw one person dying reportedly after suffering a cardiac arrest at the site.
Police reportedly resorted to mild lathi-charge to disperse the protesters blocking the Dehradun Mayor Vinod Chamoli and others from entering the compound for the foundation day of the waste treatment plant and landfill at Shishambada.
Police said that some outsiders, mainly from areas like Saharanpur from neighbouring State of Uttar Pradesh, might have been in the thick of the protest and the violence that ensued.
The project sanctioned under Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM) scheme meant for scientific collection, disposal and processing of around 350 metric tonnes of waste produced in the city every day, went on for eight years. The project was, however, inaugurated despite the protest. Some of the locals were learnt to be continuing with their protest during the time of the story being filed.
With the information of Mayor Vinod Chamoli arriving at Shishambada to inaugurate the plant, the local residents assembled at the plant site to vent anger.
Police said that the situation was tense but under control. Tempers mounted high after one of the protesters identified as Islam, resident of Jamanpur at Selaqui in Sahaspur, died due to cardiac arrest.
He was taken to a local hospital but later succumbed, said Sahaspur police station in-charge sub-inspector Mukesh Tyagi. Police further said that they had registered a case under appropriate sections of IPC against unidentified persons in the local police station in connection with the stone pelting incident.
The magnitude of the violence that erupted appears to have taken the police by surprise. The observers say that police should have been more prepared to stave off the violence, given the fact that the locals had remained hostile to the project and had resorted to violence in the past. “What happened on Monday could have been avoided had the police been more prepared,” said an observer.