'Attack on woman not due to Kashmir link'

NEW DELHI: Delhi Police commissioner Amulya Patnaik briefed Union home secretary Rajiv Gauba about the attack on a woman and her kin in Sunlight Colony area in southeast Delhi and told him that the attack was not related to the assault victim's Kashmiri origin, as was alleged in many quarters.
Four people, including the security guard and three members of the Siddharth Enclave Residents' Welfare Association, were arrested on Saturday following the registration of an FIR against them.

The preliminary police probe has determined that the incident emanated from an ongoing dispute between some residents of the colony over the feeding of street dogs. The woman who was attacked is an animal rights activist and has been feeding the dogs in the area in the company of some other residents. Opposing them was another faction that has been against the idea of feeding the dogs in public places believing that allowing canines to collect in the area posed a danger to the residents.

The woman said that the attack appeared pre-planned because her assailants were standing with sticks in their hands when she stepped out from her house on Friday evening. "I was going to my mother's house when a group started attacking me with sticks," she alleged. "It was obviously a pre-planned attack because they seemed to know the time I would be leaving my house." She refuted speculations that some action of hers had triggered the assault.

The woman expressed disappointment that the women who were involved in the attack on her had not been arrested. The woman's family also claimed that they had requested police on May 2 to provide her protection given the hostility towards her, to no avail.

Investigating officers said the arrests of the four people were made after scanning the video of the attack and the CCTV footage to establish the identity of those involved. The charge that anti-Kashmir slogans were shouted during the incident is also being probed.

Some RWA members accused the woman of provocation and said both contending parties had attacked each other. The cops said they had received a cross complaint from the second party. Chinmoy Biswal, DCP (southeast), said, "On the complaint o f the residents, we registered a case against the first party." The FIR invokes Section 323 of IPC (causing hurt), 506 (criminal intimidation) and 509 (insulting the modesty of a woman). Police officers revealed that more than 50 complaints had been filed by the two groups against each other in the past, and these are being examined to ascertain the antecedents of the dispute.