india

Updated: Jul 31, 2019 22:43 IST

A video of a male police constable in plainclothes pulling a woman medico during a protest at Government Ayurvedic Hospital in front of historic monument Charminar in Hyderabad sparked outrage after it was widely shared on the social media on Wednesday.

Students of the Ayurvedic medical college affiliated to the hospital have been agitating for the last few days against resisting the Telangana government’s move to shift their college from Charminar to Erragadda on the pretext that the hospital building had become dilapidated.

On Wednesday, the Ayurvedic medicos intensified their agitation and staged a dharna on the road, bringing the traffic to a halt. The police then tried to disperse the agitating students.

As there were a large number of women medicos among the protestors, the police called women police personnel to forcibly evict them from the place. Even as the women cops were trying to physically lift the medicos into the police vans, a male constable, later identified as Paramesh belonging to Charminar police station, standing there in plain clothes, also swung into action to forcibly drag a woman medico, who squatted on the road.

A video, recorded on mobile by one of the medicos, clearly showed the male cop pulling the woman medico, who was heard shouting not to touch her, even as other women cops were trying to handle her. He withdrew his hand first but again attempted to hold her shoulder to lift her by placing her leg behind her back and later pinched her arm. The girl was seen crying in pain.

The video quickly went viral in the social media and local television channels played up the incident in their news. In the evening, Hyderabad’s South Zone deputy commissioner of police Amber Kishore Jha told reporters that he would get the incident inquired into and take appropriate action, if the cop was really found guilty.

He, however, said there was a possibility that such incidents could happen when the police were trying to maintain law and order. “The issue is whether he had done it intentionally or unintentionally. We have to verify whether it was an intentional act or not. We shall act accordingly,” Jha said.