We were thrashed throughout the journey till Meerut, allege accused

Meerut

: While claiming to open the Kochiveli express case in which a passenger was killed and six others sustained injuries over a clash of berth sharing, Government Railway Police (

GRP

) produced the arrested accused before the media who had been nabbed from Shamli on Monday. During the press conference, accused told media that it were they who first had been thrashed since the other group boarded on the

train

at Shoranur railway station in Kerala. Somveer, one of the nabbed accused told media, “We had boarded on train at Kottayam station on March 19 while the other group that boarded at Shoranurstation started to quarrel with us over berth sharing. They were around 10 people who manhandled my brother Omveer so badly that he lost his consciousness. Not only Omveer, but they also beaten me and other members of our group when we tried to cover him. The sequence to thrash us had continued till we arrived at Delhi. They were having their tools like hammers, handsaws, screwdrivers, jack-planes and other similar things in large number which were used like weapons to thrash us badly. I can show you my injured arms and back.” As soon as Somveer tried to uncover his body to show his injuries, cops stopped him to do so. He also tried to narrate the incident when the train had passing through from Rajasthan, how the other group (victims) misbehaved a young girl, but GRP officers again stopped him to tell about that incident. One another accused told the media that they had been in Kerala for eight years as cloth-hawkers to sell cloth roaming from one town to another. “When we reached Delhi, we heard that the other group had planning to learn us a tight lesson as soon as we would have being arrived at Meerut. Being afraid for our lives, we informed to our friends about the whole incident and ask to come at Meerut city station to save us. As soon as the train left the Meerut city station, the other group again assaulted us but the mean time our friends had arrived there. Someone pulled the chain when the fight was on and in an attempt to save our lives we jumped from the train and ran away,” he narrated. On March 21, during the bloody clash between two groups of

passengers

, one Naseer was killed while one co-passenger Jasvinder Singh was allegedly thrown down from the moving train. Asked SP of GRP, Vaibhav Krishan, said that police had asked Jasvinder about the whole incident and he replied that nobody had pushed him out of moving train but he lost his control when he was standing at the gate as the train was extremely over crowded. Nadeem, a member of victims’ group told TOI, “We work in Kerala as carpenters and returning home when the incident took place.” He was having the same story to narrate in his defence what Somveer had said. Earlier, the SP said, “After interrogating around 2,500 persons of 350 villages of Shamli, Baghpat and Meerut districts, 15 persons were identified to be indulged in the incident that occurred on March 21. We have nabbed nine of them and raids are on to arrest the rest six accused. During the investigation, it came to our knowledge that first the accused were thrashed by the victims’ group and then they attacked on them to take revenge. Among the nabbed accused, eight hail from Lank village of Shamli while one comes from Tikari village of Baghpat district. The remaining six who are still at large live in Meerut.”