On New Year’s Eve, a group of eleven youngsters were stripped, heckled and assaulted by the right-wing Shri Shiv Pratishthan Hindustan volunteers for drinking alcohol at the Shivaji’s Peb fort (Vikatgad) near Karjat.
The volunteers forced the youngsters who had gathered there to celebrate New Year to strip to their underwear, kneel before them and confess that they were drinking alcohol and smoking weed at the fort. The men were also forced to sing patriotic songs. The volunteers at no point thought of involving the police.
The incident came to light when the video of the humiliating assault went viral. The volunteers identify themself as ‘Dhaarkaris’, they had also posted a threatening video on facebook before the last day of 2019. They said in the video, “hands and legs of revelers who consumed alcohol at any Shivaji fort will be chopped off.”
The Neral police station has registered a complaint against eight to ten unknown people for wrongful restraint.
Speaking to leading daily, the victims said that the group caught them as soon as they entered the fort. One of the victims told the paper, “They checked our bags and began screaming as soon as they found we were carrying booze. They then asked us to strip, filmed us with the bottles in our hands, and made us kneel and sing patriotic songs.”
While the victim confessed to carrying alcohol to the fort, he also said, “They detained us for the entire night and let us go only after we cooked breakfast for them in the morning.”
The head of the Shri Shiv Pratishthan Hindustan’s Kalyan branch could not be contacted but the state secretary of the outfit told the paper that he was aware of the incident but hasn’t spoken to his volunteers about it.
