Violent protest against Industry

      Raigarh, May 13, 2010: Chhattisgarh Government might be thinking of achieving rapid growth through large industries but in many places people have now refused to welcome them in their villages and in one such incident the villagers of Raigarh district

today humiliated and assaulted the general manager and two other staff of a proposed power plant here in Chhattisgarh.

     The Darramuda villagers today allegedly took hostage of the General Manager of SKS Power Industries K Hariharan and two other officers Manish Gupta and Rajiv Mathur when they had gone to the village to manage support for the public hearing on May 17 to set up the power plant in Darramuda-Binjkot villages under Kharsia Tehsil of Raigarh district.

     The villagers accused the three officials of distributing money to purchase support for the public hearing and claimed to have defaced them and after garlanding them with shoes, they were taken round of the villages, according to Raigarh police.

     The villagers had detained the three officials for about eight hours and when police reached the spot to rescue, they were confronted with stiff opposition, after which the security forces fired tear gas shell and applied forces and rescued them, police said.

     However, in that incident about a dozen people from both the sides were injured, said District Collector Ashok Agrawal.

     Couple of days back the people had also opposed the proposal of Jindal Steel and Power Limited to set up new industry in the Raigarh District during a public hearing.