Gurgaon: Police in Faridabad detained 39 protesters on Saturday to clear the way for municipal trucks to dump garbage at a site in the protected Aravalis, the second such action in a week. Villagers alleged that cops in plainclothes hurled stones at their own colleagues to malign the protest. Police, however, denied the allegation.A team of around 200 police personnel, including two ACPs and 12 SHOs, was deployed to remove the protesters. Some wore helmets and carried lathis.After the protesters were forcibly removed, earthmovers dismantled a red tent that had served as the centre of the agitation for the past 10 days. A Tricolour flew above the shelter, which held plastic chairs and tables, while a placard read “Kuda Hatao, Humara Bhavishya Bachao” (remove garbage, save our future). Waste-laden trucks then entered the site one after another and dumped their loads.Villagers, who made up much of the protesting group, vowed to return to the site and challenge the police action legally. “Police used brutal force to disperse the protest. Some cops in civil clothes even hurled stones at their own men to malign the movement. This is unjust and unacceptable. We will return to the protest site and fight this legally,” said Devender Fagna, a resident of Bhankri village.With hands folded, some protesters were seen pleading with cops to let them continue, saying they were fighting for their children’s future. Charanjeet Singh Fagna, another villager, said their agitation had been going on for 10 days and would continue despite the police action.“The dumping site is barely 200 metres from residential areas. They are using police force to suppress us, but we will continue to protest. Open dumping of garbage will affect around one lakh people,” he said.Uttam, DCP (NIT Faridabad), said the situation was under control. “Villagers were protesting against a dumping site that has been finalised by govt. They have now understood the situation, and things are under control,” the officer said.The DCP denied the allegation that police personnel were involved in stone pelting, saying no such incident had come to notice.Anil Kumar, joint commissioner at Faridabad Municipal Corporation, who was seen clearing the way for trucks, said dumping would continue at the site. MCF officials have maintained that the land belongs to Haryana Power Generation Corporation Ltd. Additional commissioner Paramjit Chahal, who was present at the site, declined to comment.Urban local bodies minister Vipul Goel told TOI that chief minister Nayab Singh Saini had approved two waste-processing plants for Faridabad at a high-powered purchase committee meeting in Chandigarh on Saturday. Each plant will have a capacity of 600 tonnes a day.“We will install one processing plant at this site, near the Gurgaon-Faridabad road, and the other at Pratapgarh. These will be zero-waste plants. Garbage will be processed simultaneously at the site,” Goel said.Environmentalists warned that the site could trigger another Bandhwari-like crisis if trucks continued to dump garbage. “Dumping municipal waste in the Aravalis violates the Solid Waste Management Rules, 2016, and Sections 7 and 8 of the Environment (Protection) Act, 1986,” said environmentalist Vaishali Rana.
