3 cops booked for assault

Three constables attached to the Shahu Nagar police station have been suspended for allegedly breaking into a shop in Mahim, beating up workers sleeping inside and damaged furniture. The Mahim police has filed an FIR against the trio.

The incident occurred around 1.15 am on Saturday at Sandesh Sweets. The shop owner Chandan Singh said that five people, two of them in police uniform, entered the shop from the backdoor and the woke up his workers by kicking them.

“A few minutes after 1am, one of my workers, Ramesh Patel, was woken up by a kick to his stomach. Shocked and writhing in pain, he saw a man in police uniform threatening him,” said Mr Singh.

The workers in their complaint have alleged five men soon started roughing them up. “Nearly 13 of my workers, who sleep in the shop, were assaulted by these people. They also broke my cash counter and some glass cabinets,” Mr Singh said.

The five alleged assailants then called up the police control room alleging that some workers of a shop had beaten them. The responding officers, then allegedly, arrested the workers and took them to the police station.

When contacted, an officer at the Mahim police station said at night 10 workers had been brought to the police station and they had started the investigation. “We first booked them but then when we were given the CCTV footage by the owners of the shop we realised that it was the other way around and the workers had been beaten up. So we registered a case against unidentified men,” he said.

Preliminary probe eventually revealed that three of the men captured on CCTV footage were constables Rajdeep More (32), Vishal Bhagat (27) and Yashwant Kamble (27).

“We are investigating what the policemen were doing at the shop and why they assaulted the workers,” said an officer. The police is still trying to identify the other two men.

Speaking about the fall out of the incident, Mahesh Patil, zonal deputy commissioner, said, “The constables have been suspended with immediate effect.” Senior police inspector Praveen More of Mahim police station said that inquiries were underway. “We have collected their blood samples and have sent it to the FSL for tests and the results are awaited. The accused will be produced before a magistrate court on Sunday.”