Stir was managed, say cops
How did the quota fire spread across the city? It was a deliberate strategy by event managers, say Mumbai police.
How did the quota fire spread across the city? It was a deliberate strategy by event managers, say Mumbai police.
A police officer told HT that Saturday’s protest by the medicos at Walkeshwar was planned by an event manager and a rock band member. The duo’s aim, claim police, was to attract the media to the issue.
Girish Talwar, an event manager by profession, told the police that they wanted to do something “spectacular” and Saturday’s incident was exactly that. According to cops, Talwar told them that the students had sat in protest for three days at Azad Maidan but neither the media nor government had paid attention to the doctors. His associate, Vijay Nair, also reportedly corroborated this version to the police.
So to add that extra fuel to the agitation fire, they went ahead with the protest near Raj Bhavan by neither taking permission from the police nor intimating them about their protest. The aim was to gain media attention as the area lies in the prohibited zone and there is VIP movement on the route always.
Both Talwar and Nair on Tuesday moved the sessions court seeking anticipatory bail on the ground that they were part of the crowd and not leading the protest. In their applications, they stated that they had got friendly with medical students as they had been organising music shows at medical colleges across the country since two years. As the quota agitation began, students from IIT Delhi and AIIMS asked them to help students in Mumbai.
Police also said the medicos were trying to attract media attention by faking their injuries. “Raj Vishal and Umesh Dube have faked their fractures. Their reports have denied any such thing,” said the officer.