Police take a look at the damaged car of JAA secretary Budhwa Oraon on Monday. Picture by Srinivas

Jamshedpur, Sept. 1: Deputy superintendent (DSP) of the Jharkhand Armed Police Arif Imam was arrested today after he and his men disrupted an ongoing zonal athletics meet by assaulting athletes with hockey sticks and damaging equipment worth lakhs.

Two others, the DSP’s son Naseer and a constable from the Bistupur police station, were also arrested.

Imam, former secretary of the erstwhile Bihar Amateur Athletic Association (BAAA), has been venting his ire at the state athletics officials for quite some time now for “ignoring” his status as a sports official.

But today he and his men may have gone too far.

As soon as they reached the complex, which was hosting the 20th National Inter-zonal Junior Athletics Championships, around 3pm, he allegedly marshalled his boys to attack the participants of the triple jump event that was in progress. As the terrified participants scurried for cover, the intruders went on an assault spree. Lathi-wielding policemen, who were posted on the premises, locked themselves inside a booth to avoid being beaten up. The mob allegedly tried to enter the women’s dressing room, but the participants managed to thwart their efforts.

The 20-strong mob damaged monitoring equipment and sports paraphernalia worth Rs 8 to 10 lakh, bringing the day’s events to an abrupt halt before they left, albeit for a while. The DSP and his men returned again, armed with hockey sticks, stumps and knives. They targeted senior athletes and coach Rakesh Srivastava (62).

The other victims included JAA secretary Budhwa Oraon’s son Remil, athletes Swet Prasad, Neeraj Singh, S. Oraon, Parsuram Singh, Mrityunjay Kumar and Nikhilesh Kumar. Remil was rushed to Tata Main Hospital with head injuries. The condition of Neeraj, a senior athlete, is serious.

The DSP’s men also smashed the windscreen of Oraon’s Toyota Qualis before marching inside in search of JAA president M.K. Pathak. “I jumped the boundary wall and escaped,” said Pathak.

The root of the trouble is a turf war over the JAA. Imam, who served as a senior athletics official before the creation of Jharkhand and is a qualified coach, is upset that he is being left out of the activities of the JAA ever since it came into being after the bifurcation of the state.

The JAA, he has been alleging, was ignoring his pleas to grant affiliation to the police association, thereby allowing it to participate in all meets organised by the association. Deputy superintendent of police (control room) Dinesh Oraon confirmed Imam’s arrest.