Srinagar: Srinagar Municipal Corporation Mayor Junaid Azim Mattu on Wednesday said that he will write to Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, over “multiple instances of sanitation workers being brutally beaten up” by police.

He shared a video clip on Twitter showing policemen stopping a car and beating two inmates, who he claimed were SMC sanitation workers.

“Are you talking municipality to us? Will beat you so much that the municipality will have to come to pick you up,” a cop is heard telling one of the youth and beating him with his stick.

Another policeman is also seen beating the second youth with his stick as he tries to get inside the car.

Mattu said that there had been “Multiple instances of sanitation workers being brutally beaten up by policemen in Srinagar”.

He said that he had taken up the matter with SSP Srinagar and had also shared the video with him.

He also alleged that the SMC employees were “singled out, thrashed, abused- as if for entertainment” during the ongoing lockdown aimed at preventing COVID-19 pandemic.

The Mayor said that he will write to Prime Minister and J&K Chief Secretary to seek appropriate action into the matter.

“The sense of dignity of our sanitation workers –our ‘Corona Warriors’ needs to be restored and upheld in Srinagar. Their harassment and humiliation is unacceptable,” he said in a tweet.

Extending his “full moral support” to the SMC employees, the Mayor, in another tweet, wrote that the employees had been working tirelessly during the ongoing pandemic and were “gong above and beyond their call of duty”.

“Hey are our heroes and I will not allow them to be brutalized,” he said.

Later in the evening, the Mayor said that the SMC’s field staff will continue to work and had called off their strike over the alleged police thrashing.

“Have appealed to them continue their work. They have deferred to the gravity of the situation,” he tweeted.

The SMC workers, Mattu said, had “invested their faith in the assurance of corrective action from the administration”.

Irshad Khan