On Tuesday morning, the Pune District Court saw an unusual commotion on its premises when members of an NGO, Bhumata Brigade, broke the police cordon and slapped Bhaben Saikia, the main suspect in the murder of Infosys techie Rasila Raju OP.
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Saikia, who had been produced before judicial magistrate first class A S Barulkar, was being led away to the police van, when Trupti Desai, founder and activist of the Bhumata Brigade along with two other members, broke through the cordon and slapped Saikia thrice. The Bhumata Brigade has protested against several gender-inequality cases before.
"We beat him (Saikia) up to send a strong signal that henceforth no young woman should face a situation like the one faced by the victim. Whenever an incident like this happens, our activists will resort to similar protests," Desai told the TOI.
But this is not the first instance when a few NGOs have taken matters into their hands to teach a lesson to people accused of violating law.
On January 31, 30 activists from a local NGO in Ahmedabad forced an allegedly corrupt official of Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation to eat currency notes laced with pickle. The official had asked for a bribe of Rs 5,000 for a registration fee which required a mere Rs 60. The local media was invited to broadcast the incident.
The victim, Dharmin Vyas, assistant manager with professional tax department of AMC's New West Zone, registered a case against 30 activists on charges of rioting and assaulting a government officer on duty. Pruthvi Bhatt, the president of the NGO, Lok Rakshak Seva Samiti was arrested after this incident.
"Few days back, we forced an AMC official to drink sewage water to make him realise how people were suffering due to his careless attitude and corruption," Bhatt told Deccan Chronicle.
Echoing the same point, Jigar Maharaj, the Vice President of the NGO told International Business Times, India that when officials cannot take up responsibilities allotted to them, their NGO would teach a lesson to corrupt people. "We are not scared of anybody and we will continue to take such actions against people causing nuisance in society," Maharaj added.
Besides forcing officials to eat currency notes and drink sewage water, the NGO's activists have also publicly thrashed a man in Ahmedabad for eve-teasing and taking pictures of women without their consent.
The members of Damini Brigade, another NGO in Pune, have also beaten up three godmen and a clerk of Rupi Nagar School in Pune for molesting women.
