Gzb: Video shows cops beating hijabi protesters, police say 'morphed'

Ghaziabad: After police in Ghaziabad booked around 20 women for protesting in solidarity with Karnataka's hijabi college students, who are being barred from attending classes, videos have emerged of a

brutal crackdown by the UP Police to quell the protest on Tuesday in Ghaziabad before booking the protesters.

The Muslim women were staging a protest in Ghaziabad's Khora area on February 13 when a police team suddenly showered lathis on them and started beating them up. While a man who had joined the protesting women was beaten up mercilessly by cops, women personnel were also seen thrashing the women protesters, as per the video.

However, the police claimed that the video had been "morphed" and that another half of it had been deleted. They said this part of the video purportedly showed the protesters "manhandling" the police.

"We came to know through social media that some persons had released the video on social media sites in which cops were seen beating the protesters. But the video is edited as in the first half, the protesters had attacked the police but they edited the video and posted the second half of the video on social media sites," said Brijesh Kumar, station house officer of Khora police station.

While he claimed the video was morphed, the senior police officer said they are still checking the details with the cyber team and will take action against those who posted the video on social media.

Meanwhile, the police in Khora said that they called two protesters who had been identified — Muskan and Kasif — both locals — and served them a notice, asking them "not to repeat such things in the future".

The 15-20 women booked for protesting in the Navneet Vihar area have been accused under sections 147 (rioting), 332 (voluntarily causing hurt to deter public servant from his duty), 323 (punishment for voluntarily causing hurt), 504 (intentional insult with intent to provoke breach of the peace), 506 (punishment for criminal intimidation), 188 (disobedience of order duly promulgated by public servant), 269 (negligent act likely to spread infection of disease dangerous to life), and 270 (malignant act likely to spread infection of disease dangerous to life) of the IPC.