Mumbai: Three constables attached to the Shahu Nagar police station have been booked by the Mumbai police after a CCTV footage showed them breaking into a shop and beat up the workers sleeping inside.
The incident occurred at around 1.15 am, in the wee hours of Saturday at Sandesh Sweets located in Matunga area. The owner of the sweet shop, Chandan Singh informed that the five people, two of them in police uniform entered the shop from the back door and woke up his workers, thrashing them up.
"There was childbirth in my house yesterday and to celebrate the same, I gave some money to my workers and asked them to buy some food and have at the shop. After they did so, a few minutes after 1, one of them Ramesh Patel, was woken up with a kick to his stomach. Shocked and writhing in pain, he saw one man in police uniform standing over and threatening him," said Chandan.
The workers in their complaint, have further alleged that the five men, three in civil clothes, soon started roughing all the workers up. "Nearly 13 of my workers were beaten up and assaulted. They also broke my cash counter and some glass cabinets," Chandan said.
Surprisingly, the five assaulters 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 that 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 and we realised that it was the other way round; that 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 in the CCTV footage were constables attached to the Shahu Nagar police station. They have been identified as Rajdeep More (32), Vishal Bhagar (27) and Yashwant Kamble (27).
"We are investigating what the policemen were doing at the sweet shop and why they assaulted the workers," said an officer. The police are still trying to identify the remaining two people.
The constables have been booked under section 324, 323 and 452 of the Indian Penal Code.
