Assault plaint filed against main accused

AMRITSAR: The prime accused in Amritsar Dussehra train tragedy case of 2018, Saurabh Madan, alias Mithu, has been caught on closed-circuit television (CCTV) assaulting a family in Tilak Nagar about 10.30pm on Thursday. Mithu’s brother Sameer Madan and 20 unidentified persons had barged into the house to threaten the family over a monetary dispute. The video of the assault has gone viral.

Mithu, whose mother is a councillor with allegiance to the Congress is out on bail in the train tragedy case, which had claimed nearly 60 lives.

“My father’s cousin Rinku Arora and Mithu’s cousin Vishal had a dispute over money. A court had settled this six month ago. Vishal, with the help of Mithu, had been intimidating my father Jatinder Kumar to give them money. Over the past three-four days, Mithu had been threatening my father of taking illegal possession of our brick kiln on the Ram Tirath Road,” said Nikhil Arora, 23, the victim.

He added, “On Friday night, Mithu called my father saying he was coming to take possession of our house. After ten minutes, Mithu along with his aides, reached our house and started thrashing us, including women. My paternal aunt Arpna Arora was injured.”

He added, “One of t he accused tried to stab my father with a sharp-edged weapon, but residents of locality intervened. The accused fled as a crowd gathered.”

Jatinder Arora said they have filed a police complaint with a video of the incident, but no action had been taken. He alleged,

“On Saturday, some policemen came at our brick kiln and threatened that it will be closed,” he alleged. Mithu didn’t respond to repeated calls of this correspondent.

Division A station house officer (SHO) Neeraj Kumar said they have received a complaint in which Mithu Madan’s name was mentioned. “We are verifying facts,” he said.

A probe into the train tragedy case by the Government Railway Police (GRP) had indicted Madan and six others, who had organised the Dussehra event at the Dhobi Ghat area.

A speeding train had ploughed into the mob gathered to attend the event which had Dr Navjot Kaur Sidhu, the wife of Amritsar East MLA. The GRP had filed the challan without arresting the accused, saying that the accused has “has huge political influence”.

Recently, Madan had held a blanket distribution function in Amritsar, with police commissioner Sukhchain Singh as the chief guest. The train tragedy victims’ families had expressed anguish over this.