(Sidharth Pandey is an Associate Editor with NDTV 24X7. He was injured this morning, along with NDTV cameraperson Fahad Talha at Baba Rampal's ashram in Hisar, Haryana.)
For 3-4 hours today, starting at around 11 am, the gates of a massive ashram in Haryana turned into a battlefield. Hundreds of stone-throwing supporters of controversial guru Baba Rampal clashed with the police who tried to storm his fortified ashram and arrest him outside Hisar, some 175 kilometres north of Delhi.
63-year-old Rampal Maharaj has repeatedly defied court orders to appear to answer charges of conspiracy to murder, inciting mobs and contempt of court.
The press gathered in the morning before the police tried to force its way into the ashram, where thousands of supporters had formed a human chain to prevent the police from entering the compound and arresting him.
We were all at the last cordon, about 600 metres away from the ashram.
Then we asked for the required permission to cover the operation which we were granted.
Just moments before it began, when we were in the fields around the ashram and the police was walking with us, we were asked to stay out of the way and keep a distance. We followed these guidelines and set up our camera in a nearby field.
The police operation started about ten minutes before it was meant to. We did not obstruct the police in any way and kept away from the ashram.
We moved to the opposite side of the ground to get a clearer view of the clashes, still away from the police cordon.
We saw a camera operator of another news network being chased by the police and beaten up badly.
When we protested, the police turned to us and started attacking us with lathis or batons.
We ran away from the ashram to save ourselves. After we reached the first cordon, one of our colleagues was missing.
We went looking for him in the grounds and were recording an injured man being dragged in the ground by a policeman. This irked the police and they turned hostile. 3-4 policemen came running towards us and started beating everyone up. We ran back but they kept chasing us and beating us.
I showed the policemen my ID card which the police snatched; they also snatched the camera and broke the camera lens and the cover. They then took the camera, banged it on the ground and started breaking it completely with their lathis.
This is when we were still about 600 meters away from the ashram
We saw another camera person being chased... the police kept beating him.
When we tried to look for our cars and OB van, they were missing from where we had stationed them.
All cars had been ordered to move away. We limped to our vehicles and then drove to the nearby Barwala town, which was completely shut down; the police chased us away from there as well. We could not even find first aid.
We then managed to find a private nursing clinic which took us in and provided us with first aid and took care of everyone.