GUWAHATI: Baton-wielding police personnel in riot gear were seen to have swooped down on differently-abled at Dispur Last Gate on Friday, leaving many of them injured. Members of the Pratibandhi Suraksha Sangstha, Assam (PSSA); the Drishtihin Parishad, Assam (DPA) and the All Assam Blind Students’ Union (AABSU) were staging a demonstration in support of their demand for the filling up of 4,419 backlog posts reserved for persons with disabilities. The members of the three organizations were agitated as State Social Welfare Minister Pramila Rani Brahma failed to meet her assurance on the filling up of the backlog posts. The demonstration gained steam when none from the administration came to receive the memorandum, a demand the agitators were insisting on. This led to a scuffle with the agitators making their all-out effort to overpower the police personnel to go to the road and the police resisting them with bamboo barricades.
The police then fired water cannons in vain to disperse the agitators who could overpower the former and started to go to the road. The security personnel then resorted to baton charge on the agitators mercilessly, before arresting them. According to PSSA secretary Nripen Malakar, they were around 600 and over 150 of them sustained injuries in the police action. He said that they were beaten up black and blue, arrested and taken to the Fourth APBn at Kahilipara in the city. “We condemn the government for such an action on us,” Malakar said.