A senior IAS officer belonging to the Tamil Nadu cadre was brutally assaulted by a group of Chennai policemen after a verbal duel.

Dharmendra Pratap Yadav, working as Inspector General of Registration with the Tamil Nadu government, was picked up by a team of policemen on Saturday night.

Yadav was standing at a roadside pan shop around 11 pm and helping a friend clean up as he had vomited.

The trouble started when a police patrol came there and asked everybody near the shop to disperse as it was well past 11 pm.

Yadav told the constable that he was waiting to get a change for Rs 1,000 and told the policeman not to behave rudely with customers.

But the constable refused to budge and called for reinforcements on his walkie talkie. All hell broke loose when another police jeep came with more policemen.

"An SI attached with the city's busy Nungambakkam police punched Yadav on his face and bundled him into the jeep. Despite Yadav's repeated plea that he was an IAS officer and showing his ID card, the policemen refused to relent and blows continued in the jeep too while he was taken to a police station. Yadav was made to wait in the station for quite some time and relief came only after another IAS officer arrived on the scene and argued with the SHO," a senior IAS officer close to Yadav told Indiatoday.in.

Later, Yadav was allowed to leave the station. Yadav went to the Government General Hospital and got himself hospitalised. He was treated for injuries and discharged. Yadav's lips were torn and he was bleeding.

Senior police officials are tight lipped and refused to say anything about the incident.

However, a section of junior officers attached with the particular police station submit a different version.

"Actually it was Yadav who started misbehaving with our men. Our boys are only telling the crowd politely to leave the place as it was well past 11 pm. But Yadav started talking rudely and he pushed our men," says an officer from that particular zone. But there are few takers for this theory.

"Of late, Tamil Nadu Police has started behaving like its throwing all norms to the winds. Just six months back, an IB officer was beaten up in a city police station. A month back, a 16-year-old boy was threatened by an inspector and the later he put his service revolver in the boy's mouth and accidentally the bullet came out. The boy miraculously escaped. But no action was taken against the erring officers.

"The affected persons and in this case the concerned IAS officer should go to the Madras High Court and file a petition under Article 226 for action and remedy. Then only we can at least tame and control these rogue elements in the police force," M. Radhakrishnan, a leading criminal lawyer, said.

