In India the real superheroes, the ones who quietly do their duty expecting nothing in return, are often cut to size rudely.
Days after Shreshtha Thakur, a police officer in Bulandshahr, Uttar Pradesh, set an example by standing up to errant politicians, even sending 5 of them to jail, she was put in place by the state administration.
Last month a viral video footage captured Circle Officer Thakur confronting an angry mob of BJP workers who had gathered after a district-level party worker was issued a challan β a penalty slip β for not having appropriate documentation for his vehicle.
What should have been a case for the law to tackle soon turned ugly, as party workers descended in droves on the scene and started a brawl with the police. It was at this point that Officer Thakur stepped in.
"You please go and get written orders from the Chief Minister that the police have no right to check vehicles ... that we can't do our job," she told a BJP worker in the heat of the argument.
Finally, five of them were packed off to prison for obstructing government officials from discharging their duty.
Now reality seemed to have caught up with her. According to a report in the Hindustan Times, Thakur was transferred to Bahraich by the state high command, ruled by the BJP, to assuage the hurt ego and wounded pride of its workers.
The city president of BJP, Mukesh Bhardwaj, made no qualms about admitting such was the case, while also accusing the officer and her colleagues of making derogatory remarks about the state chief minister Yogi Adityanath.
Thakur had told the agitating workers, "You are bringing a bad name to your party also ... people will soon start saying that you guys are BJP's goonda."
The incident took place shortly after another police office, Charu Nigam, was reduced to tears by a yelling lawmaker from Gorakhpur for trying to control a group of women protesting against liquor shops in the area.
In Uttar Pradesh, under the new chief minister Adityanath, the administration has started anti-Romeo squads, though the name was changed later to Nari Suraksha Bal, ostensibly to protect women and to preserve their dignity in public.
Clearly, the state government, especially the party in power there, has peculiar notions of women's empowerment, going by its allegedly vindictive action against Officer Thakur.
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