By IANS,
Panaji: A goldsmith from West Bengal claimed he was stripped naked and beaten till his ear drums burst by police probing the murder of a Goan goldsmith.
Jehangir Ali Khan, 47, Friday said he was picked up from a railway station and thrashed. He was allegedly told he would be implicated in the Sep 16 murder of Ratnakant Raikar and the theft of gold from his shop.
Khan has lived in Goa at Parra, 10 km from here, for over a decade.
“I was made to stand naked, stripped to my underwear at the Crime Branch and was thrown to the floor and beaten by policemen,” Khan said.
“One of the officials hit my face and my ear drum is ruptured,” Khan said, adding that the police were not registering his complaint.
Khan showed a medical report issued by the government-run Goa Medical College and Hospital, on the outskirts of Panaji, to back his torture charges.
Police here have been under pressure to crack Raikar’s murder case. The killers slit his throat at his store during lunch hour and fled with gold worth Rs.1 crore.
Police later said Raikar was in touch with a Bengali gold artisan minutes before the murder.
A senior police official admitted that Khan was picked up because he had left Goa for West Bengal by train Sep 18, two days after the murder.
“We wanted to know why. We are examining every single angle,” said the official on condition of anonymity.
An informal enquiry has been initiated into Khan’s complaint, the official added.