By staff reporter
Dehradun, 9 Feb: For more than two dozen police and administrative officials, including women, it was a miraculous escape from death in the violence-hit Banbhulpura area of Haldwani on Thursday.
As violence began flaring up in these areas of Haldwani in Nainital district on Thursday night, a group of women police personnel hid themselves in a house before being rescued by the police force.
SDM, Haldwani, Rekha Kohli also made a daring escape from the violence-hit areas where patrol bombs were thrown freely as the tension mounted.
The women personnel narrated their harrowing experiences to the media on Friday. “For nearly two hours we remained holed up inside a house in the violence hit area. The mobsters tried their best to barge into the house but they failed. We asked the higher authorities to send a police force to take us out of the area,” a woman constable, who was injured in the incident, said.
Similarly, an unruly mob torched the Banbhulpura police station where more than a dozen police and administrative officials were present.
District Magistrate Vandana Singh said the mob began torching the police station where a magistrate and some police officials were present. First, the mob pelted stones on the police station and later attacked it with petrol bombs. As the fire spread, the officials inside the police station started suffocating. Singh said the mob also fired gunshots at the police station.
Most of the vehicles parked in and outside the police station were set on fire. It became very difficult for the administration to rescue these officials from the police station. A large police force was sent to rescue these officials from the burnt police station.
“It was a planned and unprovoked attack by the mob on police personnel,” said the Nainital District Magistrate commenting on the violence. “This was not a communal incident and should not be made communal,” she said.
The mob also tried to disturb peace in the nearby Gandhinagar area but the attempt was foiled, Singh added.
