A video surfaced on social media purportedly showing Inspector General of Police (Traffic), Jammu and Kashmir, Basant Rath slapping a person repeatedly and calling him an idiot.
Giving his side of the story, the IPS officer on Twitter said the 40-second video was part of a 25 odd minute long conversation with the man which led to the scuffle.
The video purportedly shows Rath, who is not in uniform, calling an unidentified person an idiot and slapping him repeatedly. He slaps the person at least four times asking him to shut up.
The police officer said the man’s friends created a scene which then triggered the scuffle.
“Friends, there is no question of me doing something that would make me lose the kind of affection I’ve got in Jammu and Kashmir. This is the biggest achievement of my life. Life, not career,” Rath said on Twitter.
He said the video is a part of a 25 odd minute long conversation in that fateful afternoon.
“The guy posed to be a medical student from Delhi spending his vacation in Srinagar. He asked me a lot of questions that were political in nature. I trusted him as a friend. And my answers were honest and politically incorrect,” the IPS officer said.
“Ten odd minutes into our conversation, I realised that a couple of his friends were recording our conversation. When I asked them to stop it and delete the videos, they created a scene. That triggered the scuffle,” he said.
Rath said the incident was more than two months old and he would regret his choice to engage with the guy that afternoon for a pretty long time.
No police complaint has been filed in the matter, police said.