A car driven by one one Mohammed Umar (23) mowed down a Durga Puja procession on Saturday night in Bhopal, MP. Eyewitnesses state that the driver deliberately drove the car back & forth 3-4 times over the crowd.
After reversing at high speed to escape, Umar and the other occupant of the car Nadeem (22) kept driving in the outer areas of the city through the night. Umar was finally arrested on Sunday morning in Aishbagh area and the vehicle seized. Nadeem is still absconding.
The incident took place in the Bajaria Police Station area on Saturday night when a procession was taking the murti of Maa Durga for immersion.
As per Dainik Bhaskar, those injured are Roshan Shakya, Yash Sahu, Surendra Sen, Chitransh Singh. Roshan is in critical condition and is admitted in a private hospital – he has dragged by the car for 10 metres and has been injured in the head, hands and legs. PTI reports that a head constable also sustained minor injuries to his leg.
However, Prabhat Khabar reported that one person has lost his life and a total of 6 have been injured.
People said the grey car crashed into the procession of the Chandbarh Durga Utsav when it reached near Gupta tea stall outside the Bhopal railway station.
Umar told police that he and Nadeem had gone to the station to have tea, snacks and cigarettes. After that, he was going to drop Nadeem off at his home. Umar had brought the car from Bengaluru and had to drop it off at Indore. Both he and Nadeem are drivers by profession.
Devotees participating in the procession said the driver deliberately drove the car back & forth several times to crush people. Some state that he looked inebriated.
A journalist raised questions on the police’s role, claiming that Mohd. Umar was only charged under IPC 279 (rash driving) and has already been given bail. He demanded that the conspiracy angle should also be probed.
English MSM presents distorted version, hides identity of driver
English MSM put its anti-Hindu bias on display once again, by presenting a watered-down version of the incident, replete with half-truths. They also hid the identity of the driver, despite quoting several police sources.
Scroll, a virulently Hinduphobic site, chose to go with a headline which reduced the Durga Puja procession into just a ‘religious procession’ – “Bhopal: Car rams into religious procession, at least two people injured”.
Using NDTV as a source, Scroll goes on to twist the incident to make the initial act of the driver look like an accident and shifted the blame on the crowd instead –
The driver, who was travelling to Indore from Bengaluru, had stopped to eat near a railway station in Bhopal, NDTV reported, quoting an unidentified police official.
As the driver was reversing the car, it hit a person standing close by. A bystander smashed the car in anger and the driver sped up to avoid getting hurt, the official added.
This incident comes days after a car laden with marijuana rammed through a Durga Puja procession in Jashpur, Chattisgarh, leaving at least 4 dead. But neither the Chattisgarh incident, nor this latest incident from Bhopal has garnered even a fraction of the media and political interest/outrage that the Lakhimpur Kheri incident did.