GHAZIABAD: In a case of mistaken identity, two Ghaziabad policemen were thrashed by a group of seven people in Sonia Vihar area of New Delhi, where they had gone chasing some miscreants on Monday morning.

Two snatchers, Arvind and Satish, who were being chased by two officers, hoodwinked people around them by projecting themselves as cops and the real officers as miscreants. Calling them criminals, the snatchers started thrashing the policemen. An officer from the Sonia Vihar police station told TOI, “When they saw the snatchers thrash the cops, passersby believed the criminals and joined in the thrashing.“ The snatchers are unemployed and commit petty crimes to sustain themselves.

Although sub-inspector Manish Chauhan and constable Kiranpal Rathi from Loni police station -who were in civilian clothes -tried their best to reveal the ir identity, the mob refused to take them seriously. They even snatched their service revolvers and continued to beat them up. They returned the revolvers only after officers from the Loni police station came and revealed the policemen's identity.

The two officers were later admitted to the Civil Lines Trauma Centre in New Delhi, where they are undergoing treatment. Parmanand Singh, Circle Officer, Loni, said, “It was a case of mistaken identity .Both the police officers were there to catch some criminals and were holding their revolvers in their hands while roaming in the area. All of a sudden the two snatchers pretended to be cops and started beating them up. The mob joined in the madness and started assaulting the cops instead of the snatchers.“

However, officers said that the snatchers were arrested from the spot, after one of the two cops managed to call Loni police station and narrated the sequence of events.“We have registered a case,“ said a senior officer. He said that people who thrashed the cops have not been identified so far as there was no CCTV camera installed in the area.

