Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi on Thursday met ASHA (Accredited Social Health Activist) workers who were allegedly beaten up by the police outside the venue where Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath was to hold a public meeting in Shahjahanpur district on November 9.
Ms. Vadra said the ASHA workers were brutally beaten up outside the venue when they gathered with their demands. She said the workers had toiled day and night during the COVID-19 outbreak for vaccination and during deliveries but they were being harassed.
“Their honorarium is low and they don’t get it on time. There is corruption and when they raise their voice they are beaten up and humiliated,” Ms. Vadra tweeted after meeting the ASHA workers here.
S. Anand, Shahjahanpur Superintendent of Police, on Wednesday said the ASHA workers had got into a scuffle with the police after the personnel on duty prevented them from entering the venue where Mr. Adityanath was addressing a meeting.
The dharna by the workers had been on for the past few days.
Some ASHA workers were trying to reach the site of the event when they were stopped and then one of them, Poonam, got into a “hatha pai” with a woman sub-inspector who had stopped her, said Mr. Anand.
An FIR was lodged against the ASHA worker, he added.
Following this, the ASHA workers were “contained” and sent away in a bus, said the officer.
In a video released by the Congress, an ASHA worker, with a plaster on the fractured arm, described the brutality she faced.
She said the police personnel kicked and punched her. She alleged that a male sub-inspector twisted her arm in the bus leading to a fracture.
Mr. Anand said the demands raised by the ASHA workers had been resolved at the district level and now only State-level demands were pending. This had been informed to them in writing, he said.
