To make matters worse, some 30 trainee officers swooped on the police station and assaulted policemen who were taking down complaints against the lieutenants. The trainee officers also damaged furniture in the police station.

An independent court of enquiry has been instituted by the Army into the incident.

Army authorities and Ahmednagar district collector Vijay Kumar denied reports that 40 civilians were injured in the fracas. The two lieutenants were released on bail today.

According to the police, the trouble began after a minor argument at a traffic signal. Two officers, J S Gill and Tanuj Badola, attending the `Young Officers Course' at the ACC, apparently had a heated exchange of words with civilians Ashok Nandurkar and Sameer More over the breaking oftraffic rules.

Taking exception to comments passed by the civilians, the two officers allegedly followed the youths home to Sindhi Colony. One the officers was badly beaten up by friends of the youth. Later, the lieutenants are said to have returned with a posse of Army officers on motorcycles.

It is alleged that the officers not only ransacked the houses of the two youth but also the adjacent shops. The police claimed that when a youth tried to escape, he was caught, stripped and assaulted by the officers.

The two youths later went to the Tophkhana police station to lodge complaints. At this stage, the Army officers forcibly entered the station and manhandled them.

Policemen who tried to intervene were also assaulted. The officers damaged furniture and also allegedly snapped the telephone lines when policemen tried to call the control room for reinforcements.

PSI Chandrakant Laxman Mhaske of Tophkhana police station said the two lieutenants had been arrested and 10 other Army officers were beingquestioned today.

The police have identified the registration number of 14 motorcycles used by the officers.

ACC Deputy Commandant Major General G S Verma, while denying claims that police station furniture had been damaged and telephone lines snapped, maintained that the station commander, Brig V Shankar, reached the police station within 20 minutes to defuse the tension.

``This is a dispute between the Army and the civilians. The police have nothing to do with this. No weapon was used. Not even a stick was carried,'' Verma told The Indian Express.

Verma and Shankar, who tendered an apology to the district collector, admitted that some of the other civilians who may have been watching the scuffle might have received minor injuries in the process. The district collector said the situation in Ahmednagar had been ``defused to a great extent'' today and that the Army authorities were extending full support to the police.

He said more than a dozen officers had turned up at the police station forquestioning and admitted that although some minor incidents had occurred in the past, none had been ``of this magnitude''.

The Defence spokesman, on his part, maintained that there was no animosity between the police, the civil populace and the Army and that there was a ``great deal of transparency'' in the investigations being conducted.