'Bombs Everywhere': Mathura Cult's Children Were Trained In Arms

NDTV spoke to three children who recounted the horror of Mathura clashes

A cult at the centre of deadly clashes in Mathura that was running a parallel judicial system and had its own constitution, jails and several "battalions" of soldiers, also gave arms training to children, a senior police officer has said.

"Children as young as eight years old were being given training in arms," senior police officer DC Mishra told AFP news agency.

Some 3,000 followers of the sect, Swadhin Bharat Vidhik Satyagrah, clashed with the police in Mathura during an eviction drive on Thursday, which left 24 people, including two senior police officers, dead. The sect virtually ran a republic in the 260-acre park in Jawahar Bagh area since late 2014, with the site almost entirely closed off to the outside world.

Nine children, who were living in the illegal colony, were sent to a children's home in the city yesterday. NDTV spoke to three of them, all aged 9, who recounted the horror of the night of violence.

24 people had died in the Jawahar Park of Mathura on Thursday when the police had gone to evict the 3000-strong encroachers.

"We hid behind the trees. Bombs were being thrown around, stones hurled, bullets fired everywhere," said Abhinav (name changed). He added that they were taken to Govind Nagar jail in Mathura before being brought to the children's home.

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Mathura Cult Chief Ram Vriksh Yadav Killed In Clashes, Say Police

    The members of the cult in Mathura had set off has cylinder explosions when they clashed with the police.

MATHURA: Ram Vriksh Yadav, leader of the cult that clashed with policemen in Mathura on Thursday, was among those killed in the violence, the police have said.Twenty-four people, including two policemen, had diedin the clashes.

Yadav was the key accused of leading the violence andran a camp backed by a private army divided into unitswhich had taken over Mathura's Jawahar Bagh. He had eight cases against him including murder and land-grabbing.

More than 3,000 people of the cult, which called itself Swadhin Bharat Vidhik Satyagrah, hadambushed nearly a thousand policemen with swords, guns and grenades after police launched a drive to evict them.

They also lit hundreds of cooking gas cylinders leading to a huge explosion and causing most of the deaths. Yadav appeared to be among those killed in the fire and his body had been lying in the mortuary for two days, police said.

Two police officers were killed in Uttar Pradesh's Mathura in clashes between police and members of a sect.

The identity of several of those killed, including Yadav, could not be confirmed till Saturday as many of them were charred and no one had turned up to claim them.

According to sources, Yadav hailed from the Ghazipur district of Uttar Pradesh. He formed an offshoot of the Jai Gurudev sect after the death of its leader in 2012 and a fight over succession.

Claiming to be political and social revolutionaries, his group said they were fighting for the abolition of elections and cheaper fuel for everyone.

In March 2014, his group was allowed to camp at Jawahar Bagh for two days after being denied permission to take a protest march to Delhi - an encroachment started which ended on Thursday.

Government sources had told NDTV that they had started action against the encroachment in the park a month ago, when the last appeal by Yadav was rejected by a court.

Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav's government has faced sharp criticism for the operation. He later said that he did not "anticipate they (members of the sect who attacked cops) would be so well armed".

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