2 prime accused held for violence in Bhootnath mkt

Lucknow: A day after three people, including an

LMC

officer, were injured when attacked by a mob of vendors during an anti-encroachment drive at

Bhootnath

market, police on Saturday arrested the two prime accused in the case and deployed Rapid Action Force (RAF) and Provincial Armed Constabulary (PAC) in view of tension between local hawkers and shopkeepers. The LMC team had gone to remove a band trolley parked in an unauthorised manner in the parking lot of Bhootnath market on the complaint of local shopkeepers. The trolley, illegally parked for the past many days, was occupying a major portion of the lot. As a result, shoppers had to park their vehicles on the road, leading to traffic congestion all day in the locality. Those injured in the attack included LMC taxation officer

RS Kushwaha

and local shopkeeper

Rinku Sharma

. Later, LMC lodged an FIR against 19 vendors and 100 unidentified persons. Ghazipur SHO Rameshwar Kumar said that the main accused, Raman Dubey, the owner of the band trolley, had been arrested along with his associate Satish Soni on charges of rioting, voluntarily causing hurt, mischief and criminal intimidation. Besides, challans for breach of peace were issued under section 151 of the Criminal Procedure Code 151 against five vendors. The situation in the area was tense after some local trader unions gave a call of ‘bandh’ in retaliation to the attack by vendors. Hence, 30 jawans each of RAF and PAC were deployed. “Additional forces have been deployed to maintain peace. The force will stay there for three-four days,” said ADCP north Prachi Singh.