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Clashes rock Model Town, police deployed

To keep the peace, an entire company of Delhi Police officers from all 14 police stations in northwest district, and more than 70 CRPF officers, have been stationed at various entry and exit points at Block B, police said.

Security forces in Model Town, Monday. (Express Photo by Abhinav Saha)

An argument over a passerby being pushed in northwest Delhi’s Sangam Park spiralled into a mob fight, stone pelting and hurling of communally charged slurs between members of the Muslim and Valmiki communities on Sunday night, police said. Police had to intervene to break up the fight, and shift the injured to a police post 50 metres from a local mosque, outside which the violence took place.

Even as several people from both sides claimed they were assaulted in the stone pelting, police said only two people had been injured.

To keep the peace, an entire company of Delhi Police officers from all 14 police stations in northwest district, and more than 70 CRPF officers, have been stationed at various entry and exit points at Block B, police said.

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Ever since the clashes, DCP (northwest) Aslam Khan has been conducting meetings with both communities.

“We talked about how the two communities have a history of living together and how they should introspect on the reasons for the violence. They have sorted out their differences and no complaints have been registered,” Khan said.

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Police said the trigger was a 36-year-old man taking offence to the fact that a Class X boy from the Valmiki community had pushed a bystander, who crashed into him. “Our son had only pushed the passerby and that man had assaulted him,” the boy’s mother said.

A confrontation ensued between the man and the boy, who was accompanied by his friends and relatives. The scuffle soon escalated as around 50 people from both sides got involved.

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According to eyewitnesses, the two sides then rained punches, stones, bottles and derogatory remarks at each other. “They say my husband had assaulted a young boy. But he is injured himself. I made sure he didn’t go for the peace meetings as I fear for his life,” the 36-year-old’s wife said.

Model Town MLA from AAP, Akhilesh Tripathi, who visited the area, said, “This was the work of certain hooligans who tried to disrupt peace in the area. I intervened and tried to clear out misconceptions between the two communities.”

First uploaded on: 12-06-2018 at 01:37 IST
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