Uttar Pradesh: Havan held at Chaubeypur police station to ‘ward off evil’

KANPUR: Policemen posted at the Chaubeypur police station organised a ‘havan’ to put a check on spiralling crime graph and also to “ward off evil powers on the premises of the police station” on Tuesday in view of the Bikru ambush that claimed the lives of eight policemen and left seven others injured. The entire staff posted at the police station was removed following the encounter.
“After the arrest of the last absconding accused Ramu Bajpai on Monday, police decided to perform a havan to ward off evil at the Chaubeypur police station,” said a source in the police department. A policeman, preferring anonymity, told TOI that a local priest had advised police staff to regularly perform puja at the police station to free it of evil spirits.

“Almost all the duty staff, besides some local villagers, participated in the ‘havan’ on Tuesday,” he said and added, “A priest performed puja and chanted mantras to convince staff that the police station has now become pure.” Such was the devotion that policemen on duty didn’t even attend complainants of locals during ‘havan’ that lasted for complete two hours. “They chanted mantras and performed special prayers. It was after the culmination of auspicious ceremony that policemen attended to the complainants,” said a complainant, who had come to lodge an FIR with regard to the molestation of her daughter by hoodlums.
Officiating in charge of Chaubeypur police station, D Chaudhary, told reporters, “The havan was performed for purity of the police station premises on the occasion of Budhwa Mangal.”
To recall, eight policemen, including DSP Devendra Mishra, were ambushed in Bikru village in Chaubeypur police area of Kanpur when they were going to arrest gangster Vikas Dubey and fell to the bullets fired from rooftops shortly after midnight on July 2 & 3.