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A station house officer of the Uttar Pradesh police was suspended on Friday after a purported video surfaced on social media showing him cane-charging a youth while he was holding a child in his arms.
The incident took place outside the district hospital in Akbarpur where the hospital's fourth class employees staged a dharna by putting locks on the out-patient department on Thursday, Kanpur Dehat superintendent of police Keshav Kumar Choudhary said.
However, the police said the protesters led by Rajnish Shukla, who is seen being beaten up in the video, forcibly took the doctors and patients out of the OPD.
After getting information about the chaos, the Akbarpur police led by sub-divisional officer Vagish Kumar, circle officer Arun Kumar, and SHO Vinod Kumar Mishra reached the spot and tried to persuade the demonstrators to end their dharna and prevent them hindering in government work, the SP said.
Shukla even bit SHO Mishra's thumb and manhandle him, after which the policeman beat him with a cane, SP Choudhary claimed.
In the video that went viral on Thursday, the man can be heard shouting bacche ko lag jayega (the child will get hurt).
The action was taken against SHO Mishra after intervention of additional DG (Kanpur zone), Bhanu Bhaskar, who instructed the district officials to conduct a proper inquiry.
The police said the SHO has been suspended with immediate effect so that the incident can be probed in an unbiased manner.
Additional SP (Kanpur Dehat), Ghanshyam, has been asked to conduct the inquiry into the matter and submit his report, the SP said.
According to the police, a couple of FIRs have been lodged against Shukla and dozens others on charges of assaulting officials and obstructing them from discharging official duties.
Earlier too, a criminal case was registered against Shukla on charges of robbery and assault, the SP said.
Meanwhile, the Congress, Samajwadi Party and the Bahujan Samaj Party took to Twitter to condemn the incident.
"Uttar Pradesh under @myogiadityanath: #1 in Human Rights Violations" Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandi Vadra said in her tweet with hashtag #HumanRightsDay.
"Did the policemen not hear the scream of this father, who is saying that child will get hurt. In this regime, officers have become out of control and are lodging cases on their whims and cane-charge whosoever they want. This dictatorship cannot be tolerated," BSP general secretary Satish Chandra Mishra said in a tweet in Hindi.
"Lathicharge on a father carrying a child, there is 'damdar' (powerful) government in UP. In Kanpur the video of brutal beating of a father and his child is heart wrenching picture of chief minister's jungleraj. The guilty policeman should be punished and case should be lodged against them," the Samajwadi Party wrote on its official Twitter handle.