Sheikh Shami Akhtar, 70, gets such “goosebumps” seeing the Tricolour flutter that since the age of 12, he has been scrupulously attending the Independence Day ceremonies at the local school, block office, hospital and police station one after the other every August 15.

Last Sunday, he was thrown out of one of these events — at Ramgarh police station in Bihar’s Kaimur district — because he had chanted a slogan in honour of B.R. Ambedkar after the flag had been hoisted.

An assistant sub-inspector pushed him out of the premises, Akhtar said.

The officer was suspended on Tuesday after a public protest but the incident has left Akhtar, president of a madrasa in Ramgarh, deeply hurt.

Akhtar, who waits eagerly every year for August 15 to arrive, had been feeling happy and tranquil in the morning. This year’s event held particular significance for him — he had lost his wife to Covid in April and thought that attending Independence Day ceremonies would be just the succour he needed.

“Participating in Independence Day functions, seeing our national flag flutter proudly and singing the national anthem make me feel happy and invigorated. It gives me goosebumps,” he told The Telegraph.

So, donning white kurta-pyjamas and a “Gandhi topi”, he went about his annual ritual. The police station, where the flag was to be hoisted at 9.20am, was the fourth on his list before he would be winding up his programme for the day by attending the flag-hoisting at his madrasa.

The event went off smoothly. The national anthem was sung and the guests assembled around the Tricolour began chanting slogans in honour of freedom fighters. Akhtar joined in the chorus and then went on to shout: “Babasaheb Ambedkar amar rahein.”

“ASI Vijay Kumar Singh asked me why I had come, who had invited me and why I had chanted the slogan. I replied that people attend and celebrate Independence Day functions without invitation. We are lovers of azadi (independence),” Akhtar said.

“He became angry and pushed me out of the police station premises. I was deeply hurt and almost cried, unable to believe this was happening to me in my own country, that too on Independence Day. I went again to the police station, met the station house officer (SHO) and told him I was feeling very sad. I requested him to ask the sub-inspector to apologise, but nothing happened.”

Akhtar said none of the officers present intervened, only circle officer Archana Kumari apologised to him when he returned to the police station to complain.

The 70-year-old said he had chanted Ambdekar’s name at I-Day events for years and nothing like this ever happened before.

Akhtar, whose father was a freedom fighter and a social activist, said it was a tradition at I-Day ceremonies to chant slogans such as “Bharat Mata ki jai”, “Jai Hind”, “Vande Mataram” and a few in the names of leaders of the freedom movement like Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, Subhas Chandra Bose, Vallabhbhai Patel, Jayaprakash Narayan, B.R. Ambedkar and Ashfaqulla Khan, among others.

“I’m a citizen of India and I attend Independence Day events to express my happiness. I don’t go there for the sweets. My objective is also to increase popular enthusiasm for the occasion so that people understand its importance,” Akhtar said.

“We want our country to stay independent and prosper always. If we don’t guide our youths, who will? They may forget everything.”

He said he attended Republic Day events with the same fervour.

Circle officer Kumari told this newspaper she had apologised to Akhtar since “that was the right thing to do”.

News of Akhtar’s humiliation spread and a delegation of local citizens met Kaimur superintendent of police Rakesh Kumar, who asked Mohania deputy superintendent of police Raghu Nath Singh to conduct a probe.

“We suspended the ASI on the report of the DSP. He (the ASI) said the gentleman (Akhtar) had chanted the slogan four times, after which he reacted,” SP Kumar told this newspaper.

It’s not clear why the ASI thought that chanting Ambedkar’s name multiple times counted as an offence.

“However, we suspended him for indulging in angry talk and pushing and shoving the person, that too during the Independence Day function, which was unbecoming of a police officer,” Kumar said.

He said a further inquiry would be conducted. He, however, volunteered without elaborating that Akhtar had been chargesheeted in a “law-and-order problem” in Ramgarh in 2018.

SHO Ram Kalyan Yadav said he wasn’t posted in Ramgarh at the time and didn’t know about the case.

Akhtar said he had been walking past a crowd protesting an alleged rape and murder one day in January 2018 when the police beat up the demonstrators, arrested dozens and booked 200 named and unnamed people for disturbing public order. Akhtar says he got thrashed and arrested, but later received bail.

Akhtar said he was not satisfied with the action against the ASI because the suspension order didn’t spell out the specific misconduct the officer had been charged with.

D.M. Diwakar, academic and former director of the A.N. Sinha Institute of Social Studies, Patna, said the incident “represented a clash between the people to whom Independence and the suffering during the freedom movement matter more than their lives, and the bureaucracy that has refused to accept the people as their boss instead of subjects”.

Diwakar said the ASI represented “the intolerance that’s been bred in society and the ideas of the ruling powers that are damaging for the social fabric of the country”.

He said some people “have the mindset that Ambedkar cannot be in the same league with Gandhi and Nehru, when the fact is that he was one of the most mature leaders who worked to unite society and the country”.