A fact finding team led by former Justice of the Rajasthan High Court P.C. Jain has claimed that a man found dead in a well in Singrauli on December 13 was killed in police custody. The six-member team also found that a relative of the deceased youth was tortured by the police and the death of another youth on the same day was due to unprovoked police firing.
On December 13, 2013, violence erupted in the coal mining town of Singrauli after the body of a 30-year old security contractor, Akhilesh Sahu, was found in a well. Sahu had been missing since December 5, following a police raid on villages where dens of diesel, scrap and coal mafia operate. Akhilesh’s cousin Vijay Sahu is allegedly a kingpin of a mafia involved in stealing diesel from dumpers of the Northern Coalfields.
“There was no FIR against Akhilesh, yet he was arrested. The post mortem report shows that he died due to a puncture in the small intestine caused by a blunt object, and not by drowning. There is also an intravenous syringe mark on his hand that suggests he may have been taken to a hospital, but was dumped in the well after he died,” Justice Jain said.
The fact-finding team met the family and Akhilesh’s cousin Sanjay, who suffered several fractures after allegedly being thrashed by Superintendent of Police A. Jayadevan and other officers. The time-line of the incidents and claims of custodial death were given to the team by the family.
“On December 13,” claimed Soumya Dutta, who was part of the team, “police fired live rounds above the waist. Instead of targeting protesters they fired on school children and Muslims attending namaz. One youth died of gunshot and three others sustained bullet injuries.”
Mr. Jayadevan, currently SP, Railway Police, Jabalpur, told The Hindu that the family was under pressure from relatives in the mafia to deter the police from cracking down on them again.
“There is CCTV footage from the police station to show that Akhilesh did not come there. Akhilesh is a benami security contractor in the coalfields of a company run by Vijay under whose aegis theft takes place.”
