Two tourists were allegedly locked up for eight hours and assaulted by the police in Uttarakhand’s Haridwar district on January 2 for using pepper spray on three locals in “self-defence” against extortion, one of them has alleged in a complaint to the Uttarakhand State Human Rights Commission.
Vishnu Prasad, who works for a Delhi-based NGO, was returning to the national capital on a bike after New Year’s celebrations in Tehri when the incident occurred. He was accompanied by two other friends on another bike – Akshay Dev, a masters student of heritage, and Christo Joseph, a video editor. All three are around 26-year-old natives of Kerala.
