By Raqib Hameed Naik, TwoCircles.net
Kancheepuram (Tamil Nadu): On the evening of February 12, Suresh, 33, from Gandhi Nagar, Orikkai, in Kancheepuram district of Tamil Nadu, a lorry driver by profession was called by one of the lorry owners. After he left for work, his 26-year-old wife Sankari and two children waited all night for his arrival and call but in vain. She kept calling him the whole night and the following day, but his phone was switched off.
Finally, she called one of his fellow lorry drivers who informed that her husband was caught by Special Force of Kancheepuram police along with several others.
“The owner of the lorry Deepak also called them up to inform that several lorries have been caught by the police. This person also said that a total of five persons had been remanded including Suresh and were lodged at Vellore prison. He assured them that he will get Suresh out on bail immediately,” said Geeta Charusivam, co-coordinator of Makkal Mandram, a human rights organisation.
But to her utter dismay, she received a call on February 14 informing her that Suresh’s body had been found in a lake.
According to the information collected by Geeta from various sources, the Special Team caught Suresh in his lorry and forced him to drive towards Sirunai Village. The Special Force has been created to check the illegal sand mining.
“This is a lonely road with hardly any person at night and close to Kil Ambi lake, where his body was found. He died due to the beating and torture and then he was thrown in the lake,” Geeta told TwoCircles.net.
“His body was shown as recovered from the lake at around 11.00 am on 14th Feb. At first, the police tried to pass it off as an unknown body and totally unrelated to the seizure of sand lorries. But the lorry he had driven is with the police. So they could not keep up that facade for long,” she added.
Geeta informed TwoCircles.net that Special Force uses arbitrary powers and has a barbaric behaviour towards the drivers, loaders and other workers and has tortured and beaten them up in the past.
“Some of them are highly casteist too and torture unfortunate Dalits and Adivasis who get caught doing this menial but hazardous work. This is not the first such incident of torture by the SF. About one and half months back, another Dalit youth, who too was a sand lorry driver from the same area, was badly beaten up by this team. He bared escaped alive,” she said.
The family members of Suresh along with different Viduthalai Chiruthaigal Katchi (Liberation Panthers), Makkal Mandram (Peoples Forum), Dravidar Viduthalai Kazhagam, Periyar Sinthanaiyalar Iyakkam, Tamil Nadu Muslim Munnetra Kazhagam the SDPI protested outside Kancheepuram General Hospital since February 14 seeking action against the Special forces members involved in “custodial death” of Suresh.
The post-mortem of the victim was conducted without the consent of the family members. “No one from the family gave their consent for the post-mortem. We had demanded that post-mortem should be conducted by a team of expert doctors, in front of independent witnesses and the whole process should be recorded on camera. As there was no response from the police side, the family did not give consent,” she said. “The police and hospital have played a very dirty and cruel game, to save the worthless skins of those murderous thugs in uniform from Kancheepuram Special Force,” she added.
While protesting outside the hospital, Sankari had given a complaint to Station House Officer, Baluchettychatram, giving details of the incident, seeking registration of FIR under Section 302 (or Section 306) and provisions of SC / ST (Atrocities) Act against members of the Kancheepuram Special Force.
“He had accepted the complaint and said that he would duly investigate the matter. However on Thursday morning, he informed the representatives of protesters and family members that the police had already filed FIR under section 174 of Cr.PC on February 14th morning and cannot alter it now to include the sections we had demanded viz., Section 302, 306 and Provisions of SC / ST Atrocities Act, till receipt of post-mortem report,” Geeta told TCN.
The family didn’t accept the body till yesterday, but today they cremated the body amid demands for fair investigation and punishment to the guilty policemen for the “custodial” torture leading to the death of Suresh.
The family members and activists are now demanding that case should be handed over to Crime Investigation Department and FIR be booked against 11 members of Kancheepuram Special Force, under section 302 of IPC and SC / ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act.
Meanwhile, the repeated calls from TwoCircles.net to know the official version from District Collector Thiru P.Ponniah remained unanswered.