Police to book 20 HYC members for inciting crowd

SHILLONG: Police have zeroed in on at least 20 Hynniewtrep Youth Council (HYC) volunteers/ members who tried to instigate the crowd resulting in stone pelting during the gathering of the people at Civil Hospital Junction while the headmen were addressing them after the culmination of their meeting with the State government.
IGP (law and order) GHP Raju told reporters on Thursday evening that at least 20 ‘drunken’ HYC volunteers were identified by the intelligence agencies    through videos of the gathering and added that FIR will be lodged against them after proper investigation.
Raju, however, admitted that the crowd was restless as they had to wait for several hours without hearing anything from the delegation of headmen as they were busy in the meeting with the chief minister from 1 pm to 3:15 pm.
Later at around 3:30 pm, leaders of the headmen’s body returned from the Secretariat and addressed the gathering till 3:45 pm explaining the decision arrived at the meeting and the crowd was fully dispersed at around 4 pm.
“If text messages had been sent to other leaders who were manning the crowd about the development of the talks in time, the unwarranted situation could have been avoided,” he said.
According to Raju, the organizers had good intention, but were not aware of the unruly behaviour of a section of the crowd.
“Some women from the crowd even came to the police for protection,” Raju added.
The police official said that there was absolute restrains on the part of the police to avoid any show down.
According to Raju, the crowd had damaged police barricades and the subsequent mayhem resulted in injury to many constables.
As many as six companies of riot police were deployed to control the situation, Raju said, while adding that police had to resort to the use of four shells of teargas and mild lathi-charge.
The police official said that the strength of the crowd who were also brought from Jowai, Ri Bhoi and other parts of Khasi Hills was as many as 8,000 including the on-lookers.