Booty sharing leads to brawl among police personnel

Jammu, Apr 19 (UNI) It was not a familiar scene of police scuffling with demonstrators or grappling with thieves. It was one that of the personnel of a law enforcement agency wrangling with the people of their own fraternity, a chapter that Jammu and Kashmir police would like to efface from the pages of its history.

Traffic police personnel yesterday came to blows in the open over sharing of ill-gotten money collected from bus and truck drivers at Lakhanpur border checkpost, and later a person no less than the SSP had to step in to contain the situation.

Police said taking serious note of the clash between the cops over the ''booty'' collected from vehicles and acting on the basis of an on-the-spot inquiry report of SSP Sunil Dutt, Traffic IGP Raja Aijaz Ali attached traffic police inspector Wazir Mohammad.

A senior police officer said three traffic cops suffered injuries in the scuffle. The situation turned ugly when Wazir Mohammad took two constables along with him from Jammu and started extorting money from bus drivers, truck drivers and other vehicle operators to which the three cops, already posted at the post, objected, leading to a brawl.

He said the already posted trio wanted the booty to be equally shared to which the newly-posted cops put their foot down, saying they had to collect the money to be paid to their seniors for their plum posting at Lakhanpur, considered to be the most ''sensitive point'' for money collection.

UNI