India: peaceful demonstrators met with violence
Event- Country
- India
- Initial Date
- Jul 23, 2023
- Event Description
About the Human Rights Defenders: Civil society organisations like Inqlabi Mazdoor Kendra who were holding a street corner meeting for peace in Manipur. Inqlabi Mazdoor Kendra (IMK) is platform which works on the issue of laborers and women and farmers. The workers of Inqlabi Mazdoor Kendra also work with farmer organizations. Details of the Incident: On July 23, 2023, around 6.30 pm, members of civil society organisations like Inqlabi Mazdoor Kendra and others were holding a peaceful street corner meeting near Gonchi School, Faridabad, criticising sexual violence against women in Manipur. Women, students, and labourers were taking part in the meeting. Suddenly a group of 8-10 drunken young men led by a local young men called Sahdev and Mohit, crashed the meeting. They had iron rods, and lathes in their hands. The men went up to the organisers and started threatening them by telling them not to talk about Manipur and that first they should get the “mulla shops” (derogatory way of referring to shops owned by Muslims) shut which sold chicken on Tuesday. When the participants at the meeting refused, the youth turned aggressive and forced them to shout Jai Shri Ram. They also started harassing the women participants present there. When other participants came to calm the situation, the perpetrators attacked the protestors from behind and assaulted them with lathes, bricks, iron rods, iron weights. The assault led to serious injuries on the heads of many participants while 3 participants Mr. Nitish Kumar, Mr. Deepak Kumar, and Mr. Santosh Prajapati suffered serious head injuries. After the assault they threatened the organisers telling them to leave immediately and if seen in the locality again then they will be killed. At 7:30 pm a written complaint about this incident was made at the Sanjay Colony Sector 23 police station, Faridabad. In the complaint the peaceful protestors also mentioned that they recognised the perpetrators. But the police did not register the FIR. They told the complainants that first a medico-legal examination should be done and then they will register an FIR in the relevant sections of the Indian Penal Code. The injured people got a medico-legal examination in the government hospital of Vallabhgarh and one of them had to get a CT scan done at 1 am in the night. The next morning, they again went to the police station and asked them to file a FIR again now that they had got the MLC done. The chowki in-charge refused to file the FIR again.
- Impact of Event
- 1
- Gender of HRD
- Other (e.g. undefined, organisation, community)
- Violation
- Intimidation and Threats
- Violence (physical)
- Rights Concerned
- Freedom of assembly
- Freedom of expression
- Offline
- Right to healthy and safe environment
- Right to Protest
- HRD
- Community-based HRD
- NGO staff
- Perpetrator-Non-State
- Non-state
- Source
Case shared by FORUM-ASIA member People's Watch
- Monitoring Status
- Pending
- Event Location
Latitude: 28.402402166049022
Longitude: 77.31123402849265
- Event Location
- Summary for Publications
On 23 July 2023, community-bnased defenders including staff of the CSO Inqlabi Mazdoor Kendra, were me with violence while staging a peaceful demonstration against the rampant sexual violence in Manipur by a group of youth in Faridabad, India.