Devotees undertaking the Kanwar Yatra vandalised a police vehicle in Uttar Pradesh’s Ghaziabad claiming that it hit one of them, News9 Live reported on Monday quoting unidentified officials.
Several videos on social media showed devotees overturning a vehicle with a police sticker and a beacon. The incident took place on the Duhai Kanwar road in Ghaziabad’s Madhuban Bapudham police station area.
The incident took place on Monday, The Quint reported.
The situation has been brought under control, News9 Live quoted unidentified police officials as saying.
The Kanwar Yatra this year started on July 22 and will conclude on August 6.
The annual pilgrimage is attended by devotees called Kanwariyas, who walk hundreds of kilometres to collect water from the Ganga near Haridwar and carry it back to their home states to offer at temples. They mainly come from Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, Rajasthan, Delhi and Madhya Pradesh.
This was the second such incident in three days. On Saturday, devotees created ruckus after a car allegedly hit some of them in Uttar Pradesh’s Muradnagar on the Delhi-Meerut expressway, The Indian Express reported.
The devotees thrashed the driver of the vehicle and blocked a stretch of the expressway for half an hour, claiming that their holy pot was desecrated, the newspaper reported.
Security was heightened in parts of the district in view of the incident, PTI quoted Ghaziabad Commissioner of Police Ajay Kumar Mishra as saying.
The Ghaziabad Police imposed traffic restrictions following the incident.
On July 24, an employee of a petrol pump was beaten after he asked a group of Kanwariyas to stop smoking near the premises, The Wire reported. The group also thrashed other staff and vandalised the petrol pump.
A first information report was registered to look into the matter.
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