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Rath allegedly slaps man; Video creates buzz on social media
KT NEWS SERVICE. Dated: 7/20/2018 1:34:24 PM
SRINAGAR, Jul 19: A video surfaced on social media purportedly showing Inspector general of police (traffic), Basant Rath slapping a person repeatedly and calling him an idiot.
The video, which was shot sometime back at Lal Chowk in Srinagar, shows Basant in an argument with a pedestrian who the IGP slaps repeatedly in presence of the onlookers.
One of the twitter user, Adnan Wani, said, "When you have police officers who abuse citizens, you erode public confidence in law enforcement. @jandkgovernor @spvaid sir is it like Police officer is allowed to do whatever he wants to do. Can law be applied to this police officer for slapping & using such words in public?"
Meanwhile, National Conference spokesperson Junaid Azim Mattu posted the video along with a tweet, which said, "A power drunk IPS Officer slapping a poor young man repeatedly outside Press Enclave in Srinagar just because he objected to being abused. Where are the fanboys and fangirls now? Didn't I tell you it was a matter of time? Didn't @usman_majid1 rightly seek his psych eval? How sad."
Responding to the criticism, Basant Rath wrote on his Facebook profile, "Friends, there is no question of me doing something that would make me lose the kind of affection I've got in J and K. This is the biggest achievement of my life. Life, not career. That 40 seconds video was a part of a 25 odd minutes long conversation in that fateful afternoon. The guy posed to be a medical student from Delhi spending his vacation in Srinagar."
"He asked me a lot of questions that were political in nature. I trusted him as a friend. And my answers were honest and politically incorrect. Ten odd minutes into our conversation, I realised that a couple of his friends were recording our conversation. When I asked them to stop it and delete the videos, they created a scene. That triggered the scuffle."
"The incident is more than two months old. I'll regret my choice to engage with the guy that afternoon for a pretty long time," he added.