Police counted 1, 2, 3 and launched assault on us, alleges student

New Delhi: A Delhi School of Social Work (DSSW) student, who was at the receiving end of police assault near RSS headquarters as seen in a video, Monday alleged police took turns to "brutally" thrash him and did not even let him have water.

A number of other protesters, predominantly JNU and Delhi University students, also painted a grim picture of the police action against them during a demonstration over dalit student Rohith Vemula's suicide on January 30.

"I spotted a few men, who were not in uniform, pulling a few of our woman activists. When I raised my voice against it, someone from the police counted 1, 2, 3 and launched an assault on us and cornered me.

"After the first round of assault, I was sitting on a road divider. Friends offered me water. At that very moment, police once again started beating me up," Samudra Sanghka, a final-year MA student at DSSW, told PTI.

Sanghka, who hails from Assam, said he received multiple injuries following which he was administered an injection at RML Hospital and is on painkillers since then.

Pratim Ghosal, an M.Phil student at JNU, said the incident happened around 4 PM when the protesters, numbering around 250, under the aegis of Joint Action Committee For Social Justice, tried to hold a meet in front of the RSS office.

"We could cross the first barricade in front of Ambedkar Bhawan and were stopped ahead of the second barricade. A view emerged that we should hold a protest meet and within minutes

police started thrashing us. I have been to many protests but the brutality was unprecedented," Ghosal, a DSF activist, said.

Prashant Mukherjee, another final-year student at DSSW and SFI activist, said they were not planning to break the last barricade put up by the police but "all of a sudden" a number of hooligans launched the assault.