RAF trainees point 'harassment' finger

TT, Siliguri: Over 600 personnel of the Rapid Action Force (RAF), a wing of the state police, training at the Indian Reserve Battalion's (IRB) centre at Fulbari on the outskirts of Siliguri protested on the campus on Sunday against alleged harassment by a senior.

Reserve Inspector (RI) Sourav Chakraborty forces them to cook food and abuses and assaults them for "poor quality" of food, the jawans alleged.

The protests continued in spells till Monday morning until DIG Jayanta Pal of the armed police reached the campus and promised to look into their grievances, sources said. Chakraborty and Pal were not available for comment.

Sources said on Sunday night, the RI again abused some of the jawans for not being able to make proper "roti" for dinner. As they protested, the official alleged thrashed them.

This made others to react and most of them joined the protest inside the campus, demanding steps against the police official.

"The Reserve Inspector forces us to cook and on Sunday, he just picked up an excuse to beat some of us. We are facing physical and mental torture from him a regular basis," said one of the demonstrators.

"We are unnecessarily kept confined at the campus and even asked to come out in uniforms in the middle of the night and run along the ground. There is no proper routine. We are fed up with him and on Sunday, he resorted to another round of beating saying the food was not edible," said the demonstrator.

Some others said they have finished the one-month-long training at the centre on last month. "But we have not been released so far and are not even allowed to go out of the campus," said another jawan.