38 SOCIAL SCIENTIST It all began with a minor incident when a small group of Home Guards had a Sumptuous meal at the shop. The Home Guards were reluctant to pay and argued that they had been put on special duty on the vast mela grounds. Why should they pay when other police officers and men had been treated at the same shop earlier? When the Home Guards refused to pay, there was an altercation. A free for all between the toughs employed by Dinanath and the Home Guards ensued* Some policemen camping in nearby tents also joined the fray on the side of the Home Guards. In the melee, a cauldron of boiling oil or ghee was upset and the shop housed in a Shami-ana was in flames. Most of those caught inside managed to escape but only to face the wrath of the policemen. A chow-kidar (watchman) ran in the wrong direction and was burnt alive (earlier reports said that he was thrown by policemen into the burning cauldron). The Height of Atrocities It seems it is customary under the Indira Gandhi rule for policemen to billet themselves on hoteliers and claim free food as a matter of right, refusal leading to chastisement, loss of life and burning of property. In passing, it should be noted that the boiling indignation of the people over these gruesome acts and the loss of life of the poor chowkidar was sabotaged by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leaders who ^persuaded" the people not to take out the body of the deceased employee in a procession. Now consider this. An editorial in a newspaper said, "We seem to be running out of adjectives to describe repeated outrages on the most vulnerable sections of society. After the burning of Harijans, raping of women, gouging the eyes of innocent men and lathicharge o^n them, it is now the turn of the school children to be at the receiving end of police brutalities. More than hundred of boys of the high school of Angul in Dhenkanal district of Orissa were severely lathi-charged and actually made to march naked to the local police station a kilometre away carrying headload of bricks and stones. There they were forced to kneel down for about an hour still carry the heavy loads on their shoulders.952 These grisly happenings form part of a chain of barbaric atrocities against the common people since the installation of the Indira regime. The massacre of Muslims at Moradabad on Id Day—more than 150 were killed in an insane murderous fit—will put to shame the notorious Idi Amin or Bokasso. This was preceded by the