Cases lodged against ITBP, rail rooftop riders

LUCKNOW - The Uttar Pradesh Police late Thursday lodged criminal cases against 20,000 unidentified youth for allegedly going on rampage in Bareilly city after a last minute cancellation of a recruitment rally by the Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) and also causing overcrowding of trains, leading to a serious accident that left 19 aspirants dead.

Simultaneously, the brother of a victim registered a case against 20 ITBP officials charging them with culpable homicide, while the Uttar Pradesh State Road Transport Corporation (UPSRTC) lodged a case against 50 unidentified people who allegedly burnt down its buses and caused considerable damage to its property.

Confusion reigned at the rally Tuesday when ITBP officials suddenly cancelled it on realising that they were unprepared to handle a crowd of more than 100,000 unemployed youth who arrived for the selection from 11 different states.

The Uttar Pradesh government has also shot off a letter to the central home ministry to draw their attention to “gross mismanagement” by ITBP officials.

The letter sought to bring out the blatant inadequacies in ITBPs approach towards organizing the recruitment rally, and questioned the need to hold a recruitment rally for 11 states at one go in Bareilly alone and why the ITBP failed to anticipate the huge crowd such a massive recruitment rally would attract.

Seeking to refute union Home Minister P.Chidambarams accusation of inappropriate police arrangements by the state government, the letter was understood to have stated that the state administration deserves “praise for containing the situation without recourse to lathi-charge, firing or use of any other kind of force”.