Pune: The Pune Police have followed in the footsteps of their Mumbai counterparts. A few years ago, Mumbai Police had lathi-charged visually-challenged protesters.
On Monday, police lathi-charged hearing and speech-impaired people protesting outside the social welfare office, badly injuring some of them. The situation was tense after the lathicharge.
Education and employment opportunities were the main demands of these protesters. Since these issues have not been addressed for a long time, the first day of the state legislative session would be a good time to draw the attention of policy-makers.
Their andolan began on Monday morning. However, within a few minutes, lathis began to rain on them. Some of the youths tried to communicate saying, on several occasions, they had tried to raise their issues with the government. However, they never got any response. They wanted to give it a last shot.
After this incident, the hearing and speech impaired have said they will now walk to Mumbai from Pune, to draw the attention of the authorities to their problems.
