On Saturday night, Euphoria was supposed to play at a concert organised by Youthlink, a student organisation, for the NGO Besaharo Ka Sahara, at the Gardanibagh Stadium in Patna from 4pm to 8pm. But exceeding that deadline by half an hour ended in the band's manager getting publicly beaten up by the local cops.
Nabeel Falah from Youthlink told DT that the show, which was supposed to start at 4.30pm, got off to a late start at 6.30pm. "Our permission was till about 8pm. At that time, we started getting calls from the local police station saying that you better finish the show now since you've crossed your deadline. We requested them for some more time since it's very difficult to abruptly end a show. After 15 minutes, we got a call saying we should wrap up, and then around 8.40pm, a drunk police officer barged into the venue and threatened to shut the show. He tried to go on stage, fearing a scene, we (the organisers) and the band's manager tried to stop him. This sloshed cop started misbehaving with the manager and hit him 6-7 times. He started abusing everyone," he says.
The band's manager said, "Around 8.40, the SHO of Gardanibagh Police Station (Nityananda Shukla) barged in and created a ruckus. He punched me while I tried to stop him from getting on to the stage. We'd just asked for half an hour to conclude the show."
Palash Sen adds, "It's a fact that 99% of the public shows in India are stopped by policemen. They have no regards for the audience's sentiments or the artiste's dignity. The audience was well behaved and there was no problem at all. All hell broke loose post the vulgar display of power. Our management representative got assaulted. But one bad incident or an adamant cop will not stop us from coming back. The Patna crowd deserves a full show."
However, Patna SP Kim denied allegations of the SHO being drunk, "We're looking into the matter, but I doubt that that the officer was either drunk or misbehaved with anyone. However, the band did outplay their deadline of 8pm. It's a VIP area and we started getting calls around 8.30pm that people were getting disturbed by the music. We gave two warnings; the first at 8.15 and then at 8.30, before the SHO finally climbed on to the stage with his team at 8.45 to stop the show."
While police claim that complaints from residents made them stop the show, a Vishal-Shekhar concert in the same venue last year had gone on after 10.30pm
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