By IANS
Hyderabad : A city court Tuesday remanded four men to judicial custody for 14 days in connection with the death of a state government employee who was wrongfully confined and tortured by a debt recovery firm.
Sundar Babu, Ramesh and Sridhar, partners of Elite Financial Services, an agency reportedly authorised by the ICICI Bank to recover money from defaulters, and the firm's executive Raju were produced before the 14th metropolitan magistrate's court, which remanded them to judicial custody for two weeks.
The men were arrested Monday on charges of wrongful confinement, kidnapping and culpable homicide not amounting to murder.
Punjagutta Inspector of Police G. Narasaiah said Raju had picked up Y. Yadaiah, 42, from a bus stand last Friday and forcibly taken him to his office to recover Rs.15,000, which he had taken as personal loan from ICICI Bank a few months ago.
Yadaiah was allegedly beaten up and threatened by the three partners of the loan recovery agency. They claimed he developed convulsions and died in front of their office Saturday. The family members, however, alleged that the agents beat him to death.
Yadaiah was working as an electrician with the state health department. He had taken the personal loan from the bank a few months ago. He reportedly defaulted on payments and ignored the reminders from the bank.
Taking a serious note of the incident, state human rights commission (SHRC) Tuesday directed the police to submit a report on the death of Yadaiah.
SHRC chairman Justice Subhashan Reddy, taking suo moto cognisance of media reports, said the commission had ordered the police to submit a report on the death and register a case against the bank.