Eleven persons of a family were injured after an argument over playing cricket escalated into a brawl in a village under Bhondsi on Thursday evening.

The police said that two persons sustained head injuries after a group of at least 15 people barged into a house in Bhoop Nagar village and assaulted the family with sticks and rods, allegedly in retaliation to an attack on a member of their group. At least 15 people have been booked and one has been arrested, the police said.

The police said that the injured family members and the suspects are all aged 18 to 24, adding that some of them were inebriated on account of Holi festivities. On Friday, the injured men were discharged from the hospital and the police described their injuries as ‘non-threatening’.

A video of the incident was shared multiple times on Friday on Twitter, with certain users commenting that it was a communal dispute between the groups of Hindus and Muslims, calling it ‘an attack by the mob’. The police, however, denied any communal strife leading to the alleged dispute, maintaining that “a minor argument” between two groups of people over playing cricket had led to the violent attack.

Dinesh Kumar, assistant commissioner of police (ACP), Sohna, said the incident took place between 5pm and 5.30pm, when one group was playing cricket in an open ground in the village, about 50 metres from their house.

“Two men from another group came on a motorcycle and expressed their desire to play with them, but their offer was refused. Due to the tension over the refusal to allow them to play cricket, a minor scuffle ensued, in which one person was beaten up and sustained at least 15 stitches. The injured person then contacted his friends and to take revenge for the alleged assault, the suspects attacked the members of the other group, who, by then, had taken refuge in the house,” Kumar said.

The police said the group of men broke the windowpanes of the house and beat its inhabitants with sticks and rods, adding that some family members, including women, went to the terrace to escape the attack.

In a video shared on Twitter, the suspects are seen attacking several men with sticks, while several people, including women, blocked the gate of the house terrace. According to the medico-legal report (MLR), 11 persons sustained injuries.

The police has increased patrolling and deployed a team to keep law and order in check.

Himanshu Garg, deputy commissioner of police (DCP), South, said the suspects had been identified through the video. “In the statement, the victims mentioned that they did not know the suspects. The rumours that it was a communal incident are false,” he said.

A case was registered against at least 15 persons under sections 148 (rioting, armed with deadly weapon), 149 (every member of unlawful assembly guilty of offence committed in prosecution of common object), 307 (attempt-to-murder), 323 (voluntarily causing hurt), 452 (house-trespass after preparation for hurt, assault or wrongful restraint), 427 (mischief causing damage to the amount of fifty rupees) and 506 (criminal intimidation) of the Indian Penal Code at Bhondsi police station on Thursday.

First Published: Mar 23, 2019 08:45 IST