Bhubaneswar: March 17: At least 25 persons, including 10 policemen, were injured when residents of Andharua today ransacked the Chandaka police station on the outskirts of the Capital.

Bhubaneswar deputy commissioner of police Himanshu Lal was among those injured. Police arrested 37 persons, including nine women, for indulging in violence.

Sources said the villagers turned violent when the police refused to treat the death of a local land broker as murder.

While the police maintained that the broker, Manas Mohapatra, a resident of Andharua, was killed in an accident last Saturday, the villagers insisted that it was a case of murder.

Around 500 villagers stormed the police station this afternoon smashing chairs and windscreens of police vehicles parked in the compound.

Though the violent mob was calmed temporarily by senior police officers who promised to consider the villagers’ demand, trouble broke afresh when some people started pelting stones at the policemen.

As the situation turned ugly with stones raining on the policemen, the men in unilathicharged the mob. Sources said the police and the protestors fought a pitched battle for nearly half an hour.

Security in the area was beefed up immediately with the deployment of around 12 platoons of police.

“They refused to listen to us and pelted stones at the police. Some of our men sustained injuries. They wanted to burn down the police station, so we had to resort to a lathicharge,” said DCP Himanshu Lal.

The villagers, on the other hand, alleged that the police were not investigating the case properly. “They knew it was a case of murder but they were treating it as an accident,” said Santosh Mohapatra, brother of the 35-year-old land broker Manas Mohapatra, whose body was found by the Chandaka-Khandagiri road, about 100 metres away from the Institute of Mathematics, on March 12.

Santosh said that people of the village had gone to the Chandaka police station to meet the officer-in-charge to discuss their demand. “But he refused to listen. Hence people decided to gherao the police station with women taking the lead,” he added.

Police have booked those arrested in connection with today’s violence under sections 147 (rioting), 148 (rioting armed with deadly weapon), 149 (every member of unlawful assembly guilty of offence committed in prosecution of common object) and 307 (attempt to murder) of the Indian Penal Code besides section 3 of Prevention of Damage to Public Property (PDPP) act and section 7 of the criminal law amendment act.

Police officials said additional force had to be rushed to the spot because policemen at Chandaka were vastly outnumbered by the villagers. “We tried out best to convince the mob but it went on a rampage smashing furniture and vehicles. Three police buses were also damaged by the mob,” said a police officer.