“I was in harness, but was not resisting them; but just outside the plane in the aerobridge, I did start to resist and said I don’t want to go, my mum’s just passed out, I still have cases pending, my family is all here. I shouted for the captain [of the plane] to look at what they were doing. Just as I said that I am not going, one of the chaps put a handcuff on me, on my left hand, and he started to tighten the handcuff and it gave me loads of pain. During that time, three other guys took me down on the floor, one sat on one leg and one on the other, one guy held my right hand, and one guy had my left arm, and he started to tighten the handcuff. I said please you are hurting me, this is not humane.”
Rahul Mehta, a 26-year-old deportee from the United Kingdom, told The Hindu that the four men from the immigration department, who were to accompany him to Delhi on Jet Airways flight 9W 121 on August 14, manhandled him so badly that his wrist was bleeding, and the flight captain ultimately said he would not fly him in the condition he was in.
He said that before the men tackled him to the ground, they tried to shackle his legs to the metal harness. “They pushed my head against the wall to put the harness around my legs, but they couldn’t do it. I was crying and kept telling them I felt claustrophobic, I was going to die, there was so much pressure on me, I was going to suffocate.”
A shaken Mr. Mehta was taken back to the Harmondsworth detention centre, where he called 101, the police emergency number. His complaint was recorded, and two days later he was visited by two policemen who took a detailed statement from him. His wrist injury was attended to and X-rayed at the hospital. Since then, he has not heard from either the Home Office or the police. He does not know when he will be deported.
In replies to The Hindu ’s request for confirmation of Mr. Mehta’s story, Home Office and Metropolitan police spokespersons said they were aware of his case, but offered little else on either his airport experience or the status of his appeal to remain in the U.K.
The Home Office spokesperson said: “We cannot comment on individual cases, but we take the welfare of detainees very seriously, and all complaints are rigorously investigated.”
The Metropolitan police offered this: “Police were called to an allegation of common assault at Heathrow airport made by a man who was in the process of being deported from the U.K. on Friday, 14 August, at approximately 19:30 hrs. The man did not require medical treatment. No arrests. Enquiries continue. Detectives from Heathrow investigate.”
Foreign national offenderMr. Mehta comes under the category of foreign national offender, a somewhat unclear deportation category in which different rules apply for European Union offenders and others.
Usha Sood, solicitor from the Trent Centre for Human Rights, who is defending Mr. Mehta, has handled many such cases.
Mr. Mehta came with his parents to the U.K. at the age of 12. While his parents and sister were given British citizenship, it was denied to him on the grounds of a conviction when he was 19 by the Birmingham Crown Court for attempted rape, assault on a woman and assault occasioning actual bodily harm. He received a sentence of eight years’ detention in a Young Offenders Institution, serving for four years before receiving bail, a normal practice for offenders no longer considered a threat.
“Rahul, like many others, learnt his crimes in this society. He has served his sentence under this country’s criminal justice system, and to be thrown back to a country he does not know is unfair both to him and his family, and to the country he is going back to,” Ms. Sood says.
She says Mr. Mehta attended all his hearings and has never been violent since. He passed his A-level exams while in prison, and was appointed a Samaritan, a trusted prisoner in jail. All his appeals for remaining in the country were, however, rejected at every level of the judicial system. “When does one stop being a foreigner in this country,” she asks.
