In a shocking incident of sheer human rights violation, men in khaki on Friday mercilessly beat up the specially- abled people on Guwahati road, who took to streets in support of their various demands.
Several protesting differently abled persons received serious injuries on their head, hand, back and leg when they were ruthlessly thrashed by cops at Dispur.
Nearly 1200 differently-abled people under the banner of Pratibandhi Suraksha Sangstha, an organisation working for persons with disabilities, hit the streets at Dispur demanding filling up vacant posts meant for persons with disabilities.
Sources said at least 10 differently abled persons including Nripen Malakar, Amit Basumatary, Ranjit Chetry, Bikash Pegu, Sanjay Sinha, Himangshu Nath and Rejajul Haque were seriously injured.
While Nripen Malakar, who is general secretary of Pratibandhi Suraksha Sangstha, received serious injury on his hand and chin, another disabled Amrit was left with fractured hand due to the brutality of the city police.
Pratibandhi Suraksha Sangstha general secretary Malakar alleged that police even did not bother to take the injured disabled persons to the hospital instead they were detained and taken to 4th APBN office in Kahilipara.
Assam police, who often face flak for failing to nab culprits involved in many heinous crimes, had the worst possible reaction today, who showed their bravery by beating up innocent disabled protesters in the middle of the street in broad daylight, a rights activist told Northeast Now.
The key demand of the protesters was to fill up 4,419 posts reserved for differently-abled persons in various departments of state government.
Their second demand was financial assistance, as assured by the government earlier, to all differently-abled along with another 21 demands already submitted to the government from time to time.
The organisation had also submitted a draft modality for the recruitment drive to Dispur in April after a discussion with higher officials of the social welfare department. Malakar alleged that until now, the government has not paid attention to the draft.
“On June 1, we had a meeting with social welfare minister Pramila Rani Brahma and again raised all our demands. We found out that the issues discussed were not recorded in the minutes of the meeting. That means the recruitment drive has not progressed even after a series of meetings,” Malakar added.