Five CISF officers get relief in cop attack case

A Sessions court has acquitted five CISF officers who were accused of assaulting a traffic constable in 2010. Judge V V Patil acquitted Alok Joshi, Sathulsinha Sinha, Kalysinha Bhadoria, Ravishankar Pandey and Swaroop Nayak. The lower court in 2015 had convicted all the officers and sentenced them to eight months in prison, following which the officers filed an appeal in the sessions court.

The case
The incident happened between the staff and officers of the Central Industrial Security Force (CISF) and the police. At 8am on August 8, 2010, traffic constable Pramod Shantaram Tawade, who was with the Traffic Division, Wadala, and his colleagues, resumed duty at Orange Gate No 4.

Around 9.30 am, he saw a truck coming in from the wrong side. Tawade stopped the truck and asked the driver for his licence.

As the driver was showing him his licence, Bhadoria arrived and demanded that the truck be released, saying "tum Bambai police ko bahot charbi aaya hai. Hamne bulaya hua truck tum kaise rok sakate ho".

The assault
Tawade replied that the truck was coming from the wrong direction and the driver has violated the law. Tawade was about to take action against the driver when Bhadoria said "Aab dikhata hu tumko" and raised his stick and beat Tawade.

The other accused joined in. Joshi abused Tawade by saying "Yah Bambai police ki charbi nikalenge, Aur isko dikhate hain ki CISF kya cheez hain" and Joshi again ordered the others to beat Tawade. All the CISF officers then beat up Tawade with a stick.