4 centuries later, as a bulldozer stopped in entrance of Kotwali police station in UP’s Siddharthanagar and a band of bewildered cops tried to make sense of what was occurring, the phrase “leveller” resonated in additional methods than one.
The irony wasn’t misplaced on a bemused crowd of onlookers because the bulldozer laid its “icy hand” on the police station’s boundary wall and gate, listed amongst 55 unlawful constructions that the administration had got down to demolish to reclaim govt land for a street whose span had shrunk by greater than half resulting from encroachment.
The boys in khaki appeared all of the extra shocked as that they had been a part of Sunday’s drive, little figuring out that the police station’s wall was among the many constructions to be razed.
Not simply thana, a part of native panchayat workplace additionally razed
The demolition motion expectedly met with resistance from the cops. “How are you going to demolish a portion of our police station and not using a written order?” station home officer Santosh Tiwari demanded to know from the officers main the workforce.
“If we’re demolishing unlawful constructions and the police station is amongst them, how can we make an exception?” replied extra district Justice of the Peace Umashankar Singh, accompanied by subdivisional Justice of the Peace Lalit Kumar to the location.
The SHO known as circle officer Arun Kant Tiwari subsequent because the ‘police vs administration’ matchup continued, watched with explicit curiosity by some who had already misplaced parts of their properties to the bulldozer motion.
When one of many cops requested ADM Singh why the tehsil workplace’s boundary wall throughout the road had not been focused, he determined it was time to “show the administration’s dedication to equity”.
The bulldozer hurtled throughout the road to deliver down a 100-metre span of the tehsil’s southern boundary wall. Amid cheers from the gang, the bulldozer returned to the police station.
A name from district police chief Prachi Singh lastly broke the impasse.
Kotwali police station wasn’t the one official construction to be focused for encroachment. A portion of the native Panchayat Bhawan was demolished too. District Justice of the Peace Raja Ganapathy R mentioned the administration had been making an attempt to rid Khajuria Street of encroachments since 2017. “The street was 6m broad earlier than demolition. Now, it’s 13m.”
