Tags:
Journalism of Courage
PUNE, Jan 19: It had already become dark. The Dehu Road main bazaar area, particularly the vegetable market, is heavily crowded between 6 and 9 pm. People busy making purchases from road side hawkers and within the closed boundary walls of the vegetable market when just after 7 pm, a sudden commotion erupts.
Vegetable vendors described the incident as very alarming. There was instant panic and terror among the people when the jawans struck. 8220;Some of the customers who were in the market area just trembled with fear,8221; said a vegetable vendor.
The jawans were heard saying 8220;maro maro8221; beat people, according to Suresh Pandhare who was in the market when the incident took place. He received two blows from the jawans.
Sixty-year-old Shaikh Jainabi was virtually inconsolable when she narrated her incident. At an impromptu meeting held the next day, when she started crying, Madan Bafna remarked, 8220;Thank your stars. You are fortunate to be still alive8221;.
Jainabi, a vegetable vendor, fell down in the stampede and was virtually run over by the people and the jawans. 8220;All my life I have supplied vegetables to the army units. Now the same people from the army have indulged in such type of violence,8221; she told this paper.
Another vegetable vendor Sarabi Hasan Shaikh said when she saw the commotion, she first rushed her son to the nearby beef shop and asked him not to move from there. She herself later moved to a safer place.
The vegetable vendors had bought excess goods on account of the Sankranti. On that fateful day for the vegetable vendors, the vegetables were just thrown away. Other goods placed at safer places were however left untouched. But that too was on the verge of getting damaged the next day as the market remained closed as a mark of protest.
The findings of the report will determine if the woman hawker and her husband against whom the jawan had a brawl were also at fault. But most citizens are of the opinion that even if the woman hawker and her husband were at fault as they severely beat the jawan, he could have informed about the incident to the police and also to his unit chief. Appropriate action against the hawker would naturally have followed, the citizens believed.
The incident has led to a demand made by citizens and local traders that all encroachments on the road should be removed. In a period of just three to four years, the road had been occupied by illegal encroachments made by hawkers. This has reduced the carriagewidth of the road resulting in frequent clashes between the vehicle users and the pedestrians. The vegetable vendors are themselves unhappy about vendors squatting on the road.
