Hundreds of women, carrying batons and sticks, foiled a police bid to arrest gang rape accused at Fugana village in the riot-torn Muzaffarnagar district and the cops had to return empty handed.
Security personnel from several police stations led by senior officials raided Fugana village on Thursday to arrest a gang-rape accused, who had been absconding.
The village had experienced large scale communal violence in September last year.
The news of the police raid spread like wild fire and within moments, hundreds of baton-wielding women surrounded the cops from all sides. The villagers warned the police of serious consequences if they tried to arrest the accused.
Finding themselves outnumbered, the cops left the village without arresting the accused.
Similar fate awaited the cops when they went to the Lank village also. The villagers confronted the police there too and forced it to beat a hasty retreat.
The police also failed to arrest any accused person from the nearby Mohammedpur Raisingh village owing to stiff resistance by the locals, the reports said.
The powerful khap panchayats have warned the UP government against what they alleged “indiscriminate” arrests of a section of the community by the cops in connection with the last year's communal violence in Muzaffarnagar and have demanded a CBI investigation into the same.
Members of several khaps held a mahapanchayat (meeting) in the district on Thursday to discuss their strategy to protest the alleged 'indiscriminate' arrests of jat youths on charges of inciting violence and involvement in the riots.
The khap leaders made it clear that they would not allow arrest of any youth of the community 'come what may' and would oppose their ‘persecution’ in a ‘peaceful manner’. “Cases have been registered against 7,000 people in different police stations in Muzaffarnagar and Shamli districts in connection with the riots... while a large number of cases are against unidentified people, as many as 4,000 people had been named in the cases,” they alleged.
A few days back, the villagers had fought with the cops, when they tried to arrest a youth in connection with a case of arson, which injured many.