Village in Samba turns into fortress for ‘dangal’

Vikas Sharma

Tribune News Service

Jammu, June 21

Bassi Khurd, a village in the Samba district, today turned into a fortress with heavy deployment of police and paramilitary personnel to prevent any "untoward incident" in view of Indian-style wrestling (dangal) event on a disputed piece of land. The event concluded peacefully in the evening.

There has been a long dispute over the land between two communities. As a precautionary measure, the state government had snapped the mobile internet services to avoid any kind of flare-up in the situation.

The 2014 "dangal", organised by Baba Paryagnath Dangal Committee every year, had evoked violent protests after the two communities claimed their rights over the disputed land. During the protests, a number of vehicles were torched while a shop in the Bari-Brahmana area was set ablaze.

“The event has been conducted in a peaceful and incident-free manner,” said Randhir Sharma, a member of the organising committee.

He said, “For the last 15 days, members of organising committee and representatives from the community held meetings with top officers of the district administration over the possibility of holding the competition in a peaceful manner.”

“As far as the ownership of the disputed land is concerned, the matter is yet to be decided by the High Court but keeping in mind the tradition of holding the 'dangal' every year, the administration has given permission to hold it. Members of other community too agreed to it,” he added.

Samba Deputy Commissioner Sheetal Nanda said representatives of the communities had unanimously agreed to hold the traditional "dangal" at the venue. “The 'dangal' was conducted peacefully at Khurd village with unanimous decision. We are hopeful that this competition would be held peacefully every year henceforth,” she added.