Four GRP officers booked for thrashing Uttar Pradesh journalist Amit Sharma in Shamli after scribes protest

Muzaffarnagar: Four railway policemen, including a station house officer, were booked for beating up a journalist in Uttar Pradesh's Shamli district , an official said Thursday. [caption id=“attachment_6805121” align=“alignleft” width=“300”]  Screen grab from viral video of journalist being thrashed by Railway Police. ANI[/caption] In a purported video of the incident, which went viral on social media late Tuesday night, the accused Government Railway Police (GRP) personnel, dressed in plain clothes, can be seen repeatedly slapping and punching television journalist Amit Sharma. Subsequently, the scribe was detained by the railway policemen. The police registered a case against the four personnel, including Station House Officer Rakesh Kumar, on Wednesday under provisions of the Indian Penal Code pertaining to causing hurt (Section 323), insult (Section 504), abduction (Section 364), robbery (Section 392) and wrongful confinement (Section 342), GRP Superintendent of Police Subhash Chand Dubey said. Of the four GRP officers, Kumar and Constable Sanjay Pawar were suspended on Wednesday. The incident took place after the policemen entered into an argument with Sharma when he was covering the derailment of a goods train in Shamli. Sharma has alleged that he was thrashed by the GRP personnel and put in a lock up. They forced me to take my clothes off and urinated on me," the scribe said. However, this charge was denied by the GRP. The policemen were booked after an agitation by journalists over the incident. They staged a sit-in protest in Shamli on Wednesday.