Cases of custodial torture in rural stations

Two cases reported in the district in two weeks; both found innocent

When the entire State Police Department boasts of upholding virtues of community policing, incidents of custodial tortures are slowly staging a coming back in the Kozhikode Rural police station limits.

Within a short span of two weeks, two incidents have been reported from the rural police stations that have drawn wide public ire against the primitive method of policing.

In recent incidents, the persons who were beaten up were found innocent and later allowed to go without any charges.

In the first incident, the victim was the cleaner of a school bus who was held on the charge of sexually abusing a minor girl at a private English medium school in Nadapuram.

The cruel story of lock-up torture came to light when a group of local people who came to know about the foul play of police to trap the youth staged a sit-in at Nadapuram and eventually freed him.

Later, Muneer, the victimised youth, said the two civil police officers from the Nadapuram station attacked him cruelly to make him admit to the crime and recount the incident as they wanted him to in the court.

Primitive methods

He also told mediapersons that the police opted for primitive methods of tortures and threat against life to make him admit that he sexually assaulted the girl.

Muneer was picked up though two senior students of the school were first identified as the accused.

Later, the two were arrested, and strangely, even after their arrest, no disciplinary action was taken against the police officers who tortured Muneer.

The negligence continued even after Muneer mentioned the names of the two officials who manhandled him.

In the second incident, a youth hailing from Valayam was cruelly beaten up by the Vadakara police on the charge of stealing a mobile phone. Police attacked the youth following a complaint from a woman commuter that her phone was stolen by somebody during the travel.

The youth was picked up, as he was using a similar phone and he travelled in the same bus as the woman.

Foul play

At the police station, V. Sunil Kumar, the victim, was forced to admit that he stole the phone.

Though the man admitted the ‘crime’ after sometime to escape police torture, the foul play was exposed when his relatives produced the bill and other details obtained when he bought the phone.

He was later admitted to a hospital with several injuries on his body.