While alleging that the Centre was sitting idle over the recent Supreme Court ruling for amending the SC/ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, hundreds of Dalit youth thronged blocked several important roads in Haridwar, including the National Highway from laksar to Bahadrabad, leaving the traffic in a mess on Monday. Not content with that, they forced many shop-owners and banks to down shutters while dishing out threats of vandalism if their ‘orders’ were not complied with. They even tried to stop a train coming from Ahmedabad at the railway station. The people who were at the receiving end of the stir slammed police for remaining spectators on the roads while the agitators muscled their way in disrupting life. The protesters averred that the SC ruling and the Centre’s silence are parts of a conspiracy against the Dalit community people.
Many traders said that they had been forced to down shutters as the agitators threatened to vandalise them unless they fell in line. “I wonder why police did nothing when the protesters showed muscles to have their whims satisfied. This is a bad precedent. If this turns the trend such kinds of disruptions would recur more frequently,” said an aggrieved shop- owner who is running trade from Chandracharya Chowk in the city.
Things were really trying as over 500 protesters thronged the bustling Chandracharya Chowk at around 11 am and forced the shopkeepers to shut down their shops while meting out threat of vandalism unless they acquiesced. One of the protesters C P Singh said that they could not be expected to sit idle when the interest of the Dalit community was under grim threat.
The same muscle-flexing and the passivity of police were witnessed in Roshanabad, Jwalapur, Bahadrabad and many other areas.
The stir at the railway station saw women leading things while their male counterparts effectively blocked the roads by having their two-wheelers parked right in the middle of them near Devpura Chowk.