The Hindu : Karnataka / Bangalore News : Victims speak up on police ‘torture’

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Wednesday, Aug 13, 2008
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Karnataka

Karnataka - Bangalore

Victims speak up on police ‘torture’

Special Correspondent

— Photo: Bhagya Prakash K.

Seeking help: People airing their grievances at a hearing of the People’s Tribunal on Torture in Bangalore on Tuesday.

Bangalore: Nineteen-year-old Arun Kumar wept uncontrollably as his father, Raju, narrated how physical and mental torture at the hands of the police had ruined his son’s life.

Arun has the mental age of a three-year-old, and clings to his father as any child would when faced with a huge gathering.

Speaking at a hearing of the People’s Tribunal on Torture organised here on Tuesday by the National Project on Prevention of Torture in India, Karnataka, Raju said that his son was as normal as anyone else until he was picked up by the J.P. Nagar police in February this year.

The owner of the driving school for which Arun worked had complained to the police that that the boy had a relationship with his wife. Arun was detained at the police station for three days and tortured, said Raju.

“I sold my wife’s gold chain and got my son out after paying Rs. 20,000,” he said.

This, however, was not the end of the family’s misery. Raju said that the police kept picking up the boy at the instigation of the owner of the driving school and torturing him, leading to severe injuries. Unable to bear this, Arun consumed 450 ml of pesticide one night. He survived, but he is now physically and mentally crippled for life.

Raju, a taxi driver, has spent Rs. 9 lakh on his son’s treatment, selling his house to meet the expenses.

“I was told that the policeman responsible for torturing my son was suspended. But he is back at work now,” said Raju.

Though Arun needs immediate psychiatric attention, his family cannot afford to spend any more money on his treatment.

Seven testimonials

Raju’s testimonial was among the seven heard on the first day of the hearing.

Twenty-year-old Mohammed Ghouse from Mysore, another victim of torture, said that he was picked up in March on the charge helping a couple in his neighbourhood elope. He was taken to the City Crime Branch station in Lashkar Mohalla.

When he said he did not know about the whereabouts of the couple, he was given electric shocks, the after-effects of which he is still suffering. He alleged that his mother who had come to the police station asking for his release had been spoken to rudely and pushed around. “They said abusive things about my religion and threatened to file cases against me as a terrorist if I spoke out against police torture,” he said.

Many such tales of torture, rape and detention of children in custody were narrated by victims at the hearing before a 24-member jury.

H.N. Nagamohan Das, Judge of the Karnataka High Court, who inaugurated the tribunal, said that the Indian Penal Code should be amended to ensure that the police are humane in their approach.

As many as 1,200 to 1,300 custodial deaths had been reported in the past four years. Custodial torture was continuing despite strictures passed against it by the Supreme Court, he said.

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