The custodial torture and death in Wadala Police Station is the latest to draw attention to the endemic practice of police torture.
By Mansi Sharma,
FOR the underprivileged in our country, police stations have become torture chambers. It would not be an exaggeration to compare them with Abu Ghraib.
The pictures emerging from the cells of Abu Gharib – of wanton and indescribable physical and sexual abuse of detainees, shocked the world. Something not very dissimilar is happening in Indian police stations.
On May 16, 2014, when the Supreme Court of India acquitted five of six men accused in Akshardham attack case, it drew attention towards coercive methods adopted by investigating agencies to extract confessional statements. The Andhra Pradesh Minorities Commission-appointed Ravi Chander enquiry dwelt at length on the torture inflicted upon scores of Muslim youth following the Mecca Masjid blast on 2006. I remember, at a convention in Delhi some years ago, one of those tortured recalling the smell of burnt flesh in police custody, and then realizing it were his own lips smouldering from the electric shocks administered by the police.
Images are for illustrative purposes only.
However, torture is not confined to terror investigations at all; indeed, it has become endemic and often seen as a quick route to ‘solving cases’. But even in this widespread culture of abuse and torture, the case of gross abuse of four young men at the hands of police at the Wadala police station manages to shake us.
On the night of April 15, police picked four boys, Agnelo (Richie), Arbaz, Irfan and Sufiyan from their homes near Reay Road Police Station for the theft of gold chain and brought them to Wadala Police Station.
They were not presented before the Magistrate, in violation of the law, till two days later. Though Arbaz was minor, he was kept with the other accused. Two days later, Agnelo died in police custody.
Their affidavits submitted to the court describe the horror, abuse and indignity these boys were subjected to. In his written complaint, Irfan has said “my hands and legs were tied with a big rope and a big heavy iron rod was put between my folded legs on which I was hanged upside down. I was naked during this time. Mane and Kamble were assaulting me turn by turn with belt and the danda one by one. Then One Ganya officer holding the stick tried to insert the said stick into my anus but as the stick was thick it didn’t penetrate into my anus and so Mane and Kamble said that we have to spray petrol into his anus using a spray pump”.
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