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Basant Rath Slaps Kashmiri Boy-Video Evokes Sharp Criticism

July 19

A video of The Inspector General of Traffic, Jammu Kashmir Police Basant Rath slapping a local boy in Srinagar’s lal chowk area has gone viral over the social networking.

In this less than one minute video, clicked from a distance Rath can be seen slapping the youth many times, who people say was a traffic violator.

Rath who otherwise is popular in the Srinagar for the steps he has taken for clearing the traffic mess from the Srinagar streets has been criticised for the behavior.

The IGP traffic responding to the video said that the 40 seconds clip was a part of a 25 odd minutes long conversation in that fateful afternoon.

The incident is more than two months old, Basant claimed.

He claimed that the guy being slapped posed to a be medical student from Delhi spending his vacation in Srinagar and asked him questions that were political in nature. “I answered with my heart, but i saw his friends were recording my conversation post which i fell agitated,” Basant wrote.

He said the ‘Scuffle’ happened when he realised that a couple of his friends were recording our conversation adding that when he asked them to stop it and delete the videos, they created a scene.