Heena Banu wails over her dead husband, who was killed in the custody of police in Channagiri taluk of Davanagere District. She is one of the many to narrate a story contrary to what the police claim in FIRs. According to the police, Adil (29) was picked up from his home at around 8:45 PM on receiving information that he was gambling and collapsed in the middle of the interrogation. They took him to the hospital, where he was declared dead. However, his wife says that he was picked up from the market at around 7 PM, almost two hours before what shows on police records, and was tortured to the point where he succumbed to the injuries.
A fact-finding team consisting of various human rights organisations (AILAJ, APCR and PUCL) went to Channagiri to discover more about the case. Adil, a local of Channagiri taluk was a carpenter, according to Heena, he used to gamble but stayed on good terms with the local police by paying hafta (weekly pay). However, the police have not been receiving hafta from him during the past few months due to some financial constraints he was facing, which antagonized his relationship with the police.
One thing that remains uncontested is that Adil collapsed inside the Police Station. There are videos of Adil’s dead body with bruises on his back and what seems to be a broken ankle, as the bone is seen protruding outside. However, the post-mortem report suggests that he died of a cardiac event, it has not recorded the bruise marks on Adil’s body, and the broken ankle as seen in the footage and narrated by the locals who had witnessed it. Upon hearing about this news of ‘Lock-up death’, a huge crowd gathered near the police station which also resulted in clashes with police personnel. Many of the Muslim youths have been arbitrarily arrested citing this incident in the taluk of Channagiri.
CM Siddaramiah stated on 25th May that the youth was suffering from epilepsy and the police had brought him to the hospital where he died during treatment. However, the hospital documents say that he was brought dead on arrival. The police are offering settlements and the local politicians are mounting pressure on the family to not pursue the case. No FIR was registered when Adil was interrogated, and neither was any arrest memo or warrant issued before the arrest of Adil, making it a completely illegal arrest. The state government has suspended the Circle Inspector who participated in the raid and the DySP, citing procedural errors made by them during the arrest. The case is now being investigated by the Central Investigation Department.
This is not an isolated incident but rather part of a larger issue of custodial torture and death that persists in our country, where the police flout criminal procedures established by the law and use excessive and extrajudicial measures with impunity. The police who partake in such activities should be treated no less than any ordinary criminal who violates the law. National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) has reported that between 2020 – 2022 alone over 4484 custodial deaths have been reported in India out of that 278 deaths were in police custody. Custodial deaths cannot be considered as mere coincidences as projected often, given the sheer number of young and healthy people who are arrested and the out-right police excesses that are ingrained in the Police of the Indian state. One can only hope that Adil would not become just another number in the government database and he and his family would get the justice they deserve through a fair investigation of the incident.
