Ahmedabad: Two days after a video showing hooligans wielding swords, vandalising public property, and threatening people on roads in the Bapunagar area went viral, the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation (AMC), escorted by the city police, demolished the house of four accused in the Rakhial area on Saturday afternoon.
City police arrested four men — Fazal Shaikh, Altaf Shaikh, Mehfooz Shaikh, and Sameer Shaikh — in the case. They were seen pushing cops into a police van, shooing away officers from taking any action, and spreading terror. They resorted to violence and wielded swords following a brawl with a rival gang in the Bapunagar and Rakhial areas.
According to a statement by the AMC, the action was taken as part of removing encroachments from an open plot of the civic body. The statement said that a place named Akbarnagar slum near the ACP office in Bapunagar was encroached upon by anti-social elements. Therefore, four premises, including one commercial establishment and three residential premises, were razed, it said.
The action has been seen as a counter-action by the state administration, which included parading the accused, who were seen limping, in the area and later razing their properties.
In July 2023, the Gujarat high court charged five Rajkot cops for parading, humiliating, and beating accused persons in Pradyumnanagar in Rajkot in 2016. Various high courts and the Supreme Court have passed several orders against the public parading of accused persons.
Last month, the Supreme Court banned the bulldozer justice, calling it unconstitutional. However, in the present case, the civic body officers claimed that they had issued notices to remove encroachments in the past. A source privy to the development said that one such notice was issued on Friday only.
A local activist, Kaleem Siddiqui, questioned the timing of the razing of the accused’s premises and called it an act to please people for a short time. “Had the cops shown some alertness, these accused would not have resorted to such violence,” he said.