Cops assault villagers in Purnia

PURNIA: About a dozen villagers, including half-a-dozen women, were allegedly assaulted by policemen at Mohammadnagar village under Krityanandnagar police station in Purnia around midnight on Saturday.
A few houses belonging to tribals and minorities were also torched allegedly by the policemen when they arrived at the scene at the behest of some land brokers and let loose a reign of terror, sources said. Purnia SP Nayyar Hasnain Khan said the incident was a fallout of land dispute which has been festering for quite sometime.
Abdul Wahab and Mohd Mubarak, tracing the genesis of the trouble, said some men had purchased four acres of land from one, Gayatri Devi, ten years back. But, the revenue officials were dilly-dallying in finalising the legal formalities with the regard to the land.
Lately, however, the land mafia and land brokers were eyeing the land and were trying to uproot and grab the land with the tacit support of the local policemen, said Fracis Tuddu, a tribal landowner. The land brokers and touts also terrorised them. FIRs related to their alleged rape of women were registered with the police station, they revealed. The SP said he had asked the SDO (civil) to resolve the protracted land dispute.
He said an ASI, Pawan Chowdhury, has been suspended for his tactless handling of the situation and reaching the village at midnight.
Sundaria Khatoon (35), Shahnaz Khatoon (25) and Agnesh Murmu (28) and a widow, Nazma Khatoon (50), who were among those injured, narrated how a handful of cops reached their village around midnight and asked them to vacate their hutments and shift elsewhere.
They also narrated how some land brokers always roamed around their hutments at night in drunken condition and pestered them to vacate the land.