Four men were allegedly beaten up by a group of people on Sunday evening for taking photographs near the controversial PVR Water Theme Park owned by Nilambur MLA PV Anwar at Koodaranhi in Kozhikode.
The injured men have been identified as Sherin, Althaf, Shahad and Jaseem. All four reportedly hail from Kodiyathur in Mukkam in the district and had come to Koodaranhi for a short visit.
According to television reports, the foursome had come out of the waterpark and was taking photographs just outside the water park, when they were accosted by a group of locals and a few policemen.
The locals mistook the four men for media persons shooting visuals of the water park and assaulted them in the presence of the police, reports said.
The park has been at the centre of controversy ever since it was reported that it had been constructed in violation of several land use rules.
The four men alleged that the police had made them kneel on the road outside the park, and that a group of men had then beaten them up.
“They (the police) asked us why we are sitting there. Then they asked us to kneel down (on the road). Since there was a bad smell coming from them, I asked whether they were drunk. The policeman looked at me and asked me to kneel down again. By that time some locals attacked us. It was only after the assualt that they were ready to listen to us," one of the four men told Manorama News.
The police, however, dismissed any connection between their assault and the water park, and claimed that the men were far away from the water park when they were assaulted. Speaking to TNM, Thiruvambady Sub Inspector JE Jayan said that the four men had been found beaten up some 3-4km away from the water park.
“They were in an inebriated state and found beaten up far from the park at around 3am. They were found in a deserted place,” SI Jayan said.
He added that the police immediately transferred all four to a nearby hospital in an autorickshaw. “When they became conscious, they said that they were beaten up by some unidentified people. The police is verifying the details the youths provided about them,” he added.
The SI said that the four men were aged between 25 and 27 years, and one of them had suffered a significant injury to his face. “He was injured and there is a bulge on his nose,” the SI said.
The PVR Water Theme Park has been facing allegations of violating waste management guidelines and functioning without the necessary permissions from the local panchayat. It has also been alleged that a check dam was illegally constructed to divert water for the park, and a forest department probe has been launched into this matter.
MLA Anwar had also recently raised eyebrows with his bizarre claim that Japan had funded a water project in Kerala to make it rain in Japan.
“Why are the people in Japan interested in making the people of Kerala drink water? This is where you have to understand. The monsoon clouds from the Western Ghats travel to Japan and make it rain there. They get drinking water because of the monsoon clouds from the Western Ghats. So what is Japan's need? The forests here must increase! Only then the people there will get water. That is the understanding,” the MLA had said in a press meet while trying to divert questions away from the allegations surrounding his water park.