A statue of Dalit icon B R Ambedkar was vandalised in Haridwar district’s Kanhawali village in the wee hours of Friday. The police said that the 3-feet-tall statue is built on a disputed land which could be the reason that a few villagers allegedly vandalised the idol. “A case is ongoing in the SDM court in (Haridwar’s) Laksar area where the Dalits have said that the land on which the statue was built belongs to the government, while one Gujjar villager has claimed that the land belonged to him,” Station Officer, Bhagwan, of Haridwar’s Khanpur police station said. The village has a population of about 1,500, and half of the population are Dalits. Tension started brewing when the news of the vandalism spread across the village on Friday morning. Following the vandalism, one Sukhpal from the village filed an FIR in the Khanpur police station against “unknown persons” under Sections 295 (defiling place of worship) and 295A (malicious acts to outrage religious feelings) of the Indian Penal Code. “We are probing the matter,” Bhagwan said, adding that on Friday police were deployed in the village to maintain peace, and during the day the vandalised statue was replaced with a new statue of Ambedkar.
