Amid a passer-by seriously injured by one of the Saraswati Puja devotion subscription extortionist group of students near Ram Dayal Munda Park on Thursday, the police appear pre-decided not to act on them until sufferers turn complainants. Though City SP Aman Kumar said on Friday that an FIR has been lodged in the case against one named and many unnamed culprits and raids by lalpur police station officials were conducted to nab the named one, he added that the police were helpless in absence of complainants in similar cases.
From buses to auto-drivers and from temporary eateries set-ups to established shop-owners in streets, everyone is under threat of extortionists in disguise of worshippers of Goddess of Knowledge (Saraswati) who attack anyone and everyone coming in their way for meager puja subscription. They go any mile including vandalizing shops to attack shop owners to extort money from them in the name of Puja, and the police keeps on waiting for complaints which had hardly been made due to various reasons.
“But the police remain ignorant to such anti-social elements. Contrary to stopping them, they (the police) approach to us only to convince that there is no harm in giving them Rs 50-100 in the name of Puja once in a year. But this is not once in a year affair and we face it before every major religious celebrations round the year,” said one Pradeep Kumar who runs a temporary eatery shop in Morhabadi. “Any forcible demand of money on the name of puja subscription is equal to extortion and we are committed not to allow such incidents to occur. But the problem is that while we carry on random checks from our side to catch such elements red-handed, we don’t see verbal complainants turning in to police stations to make formal complaints,” said Aman Kumar. Notably, a gang of puja subscription seekers approached one temporary eatery set-up near Ram Dayal Munda Park on Thursday and demanded money from him. As the shop owner refused and invited heated discussions with the gang, one of the gang members threw fry pan containing boiling oil on the ground, causing a passer-by receiving burns. The capital city has witnessed incidents of ransacking shops to defacing individuals who refused to pay donation.