Banaras Bar Association Protests Police Apology Order After KVT Tilak Scuffle

Banaras Bar Association president Vinod Shukla led advocates into ACP Alok Priyadarshi’s office on Friday and submitted a memorandum. The lawyers were angry about how Chowk police had closed a preventive detention after a chandan-tilak scuffle near Kashi Vishwanath Temple Gate No. 4 a day earlier.

Advocates Saurabh Pandey, Vivek Pandey, Vikas Singh and Dinesh Dixit were among those who went with Shukla. The group demanded action over police conduct. The ACP told them the complaint would be investigated.

Thursday’s dispute began among people applying chandan tilak near Gate No. 4 and spilled into a scuffle. Chowk police detained three men. Station House Officer Dilip Kumar Mishra said the argument could not be controlled. After checking CCTV footage and people present, he said, the three were held as a preventive step. Then, after what he called strict action, they were made to apologise with folded hands.

The detainees named in the account were Ajay Dubey, 58, of Chhittupur Sigra; Hariom Pandey, 19; and Rajesh Pandey of Brahmanal Chowk. Who shoved first is still contested. Friday’s new fact is the Bar’s written objection to that apology ritual.

Shrawan keeps the temple approaches crowded with pilgrims and police. Preventive arrests are a familiar response when a scuffle breaks out under festival pressure. What carried this case from Chowk thana to the Bar Association’s deputation was Mishra’s on-record description of the folded-hands apology. Shukla’s group treated that ending as conduct that needed inquiry, not a quiet close once the lane cleared.

Police and the Bar now stand on opposite sides of a contested question: whether ordering that apology after detention was proper. Both the lawyers’ protest and the SHO’s explanation go on the record as published, without treating either version as settled law.

No Friday report mentioned a suspension, a finished departmental finding or a court petition filed off the memorandum. Thursday brought the Gate No. 4 scuffle, the Chowk detention, Mishra’s CCTV-backed preventive step and the apology. Friday brought Shukla’s deputation, the written demand and Priyadarshi’s promise to look into it.

Chowk station has not issued a fresh public statement since Mishra spoke. The ACP’s inquiry, once it produces a written note, will set the next turn. Until then the Friday facts are the named lawyers, the named detainees, Mishra’s justification and Priyadarshi’s assurance.

For 21 August the news is the Banaras Bar Association’s protest. Thursday’s fight over who applied tilak first belongs to the crime diary. Friday belongs to the lawyers who said the way police closed it needed scrutiny.