Resh­ma Ra­goonath

Vi­o­lence brought a pre­ma­ture end to J'Ou­vert cel­e­bra­tions in Pe­nal yes­ter­day af­ter a po­lice cor­po­ral was at­tacked by rev­ellers. The of­fi­cer was tak­en to the Pe­nal Dis­trict Health af­ter he was hit with two beer bot­tles on his head. He was treat­ed for head in­juries and lat­er dis­charged. Cel­e­bra­tions kicked off at 4 am with rev­ellers frol­ick­ing along the Pe­nal Main Road. How­ev­er, the cel­e­bra­tions quick­ly turned vi­o­lent as po­lice had to be called in to break up fights in the crowd.

The fights broke out around 8.50 am and the po­lice of­fi­cer, iden­ti­fied as Cor­po­ral Mungroo, at­tempt­ed to de­tain a man who was fight­ing in the crowd. Mungroo, how­ev­er, was am­bushed by a group of men, two of whom struck him on his head with beer bot­tles. Oth­er of­fi­cers came to Mungroo's aid and ar­rest­ed one of his at­tack­ers. They al­so de­tained the man the of­fi­cer was try­ing to ar­rest.

Ac­cord­ing to re­ports, af­ter the sus­pects were de­tained, an­gry rev­ellers sur­round­ed the po­lice sta­tion de­mand­ing their re­lease. More po­lice had to be called in to dis­perse a group of about 30 rev­ellers.

This vi­o­lent in­ci­dent prompt­ed po­lice to end the cel­e­bra­tions at 9 am, one hour ear­li­er than sched­uled.

There were sev­er­al stab­bing in­ci­dents and of­fi­cers de­tained three peo­ple for pos­ses­sion of weapons. They will ap­pear be­fore a Siparia Mag­is­trate to­mor­row. About 500 rev­ellers par­tic­i­pat­ed in yes­ter­day's cel­e­bra­tions.