Grand protests rocked Amritsar as residents clashed with security personnel and pelted them with stones at the site of the train accident after they were removed from railway tracks on Sunday .
A Punjab police commando and a photojournalist were injured as the protesters, who were staging a sit-in at the site, started pelting stones and indulged in brick-batting, police said.
The clash started minutes after the security forces removed the protesters, numbering in hundreds, from the track to clear it for traffic, the officials said.
The organisers of the Dussehra event in Amritsar also faced the wrath of public as protesters threw stones at their home in the morning. The situation is tense at and around the site and a huge police deployment has been made to maintain law and order, officials said.
The organisers, local councillor Vijay Madan and her son, Sourabh Madan Mithu, are missing and their home is locked. The FIR filed by the Government Railway Police (GRP) names no one and is against unidentified people on the grounds that the accused in the case were yet to be identified.
Officials said that personnel from the Punjab Police and Rapid Action Force have been deployed alongside the state police commandos.
Local residents have been protesting at the site and blocking the railway track since Friday evening when the Dussehra revellers were mowed down by a speeding train.
They raised slogans against the district administration claiming that some people were still missing. They demanded that the missing person be traced and also adequate compensation be given to the families of the victims.
“Two labourers who were living in my area are still missing,” said Kamal, who is a resident of an area near Joda Phatak where at least 59 people were killed Friday evening after a Dussehra gathering watching the burning of a Ravana effigy was run over by a train. Kamal raised apprehensions that the death toll could be higher than the figure given by the government.
On Saturday, after visiting the accident site and the hospitals where the injured were admitted, Chief Minister Amarinder Singh had said 59 people were killed and 57 injured. Sub-divisional magistrate Rajesh Sharma, however, said 61 people lost their lives.
At the Sunday protest, another local, named Raju, said a man was still looking for the body of his father who died in the incident. “He had gone to collect a piece of cloth to cover the body of his father, but when he returned he could not find the body,” said Raju.
