nandakumar wrote:I dare say, the police are known to use strong arm tactics. But for a lockdown violation? That seems a bit of a stretch.
From what I have noticed; it is actually very rare for police officials to literally beat some one to death these days. Many of the police men actually are keen on keeping their jobs safe. A recent
case of actual torture & custodial death happened in Kerala. Here a man was actually kept in illegal custody for nearly 2-3 days. This man was suspected to have embezzled funds to a shady (illegal?) chit fund company. These illegal financiers also had 'encouraged' the police to go for strong arm tactics. And the police men who actually tortured him also did it after getting support from their immediate supervisors. Again their intention was not to kill the man, but ultimately that was what happened
.
Don't know more on the death of two people in Tamil Nadu. Was it a similar case like what happened in Kerala? There are also cases where individuals have died and the relatives and friends alleging that the death was due to police torture which kind of happened months back. But looks like today EJs have gained an upper hand, at least in this case.
chetak wrote:there seems to be heavy involvement of EJs and it looks like a black lives matter type of attempt to hype up the case
The link you gave even though in favour of EJs actually gives some more insight to the case. Note the line -
"“Raja Singh is crucial to our case because he was in the same jail as Jayaraj and Bennix,”". So did the two individuals die in a sub-jail? Sub-Jails are not manned by police officers from the local police. Secondly an individual is sent to a sub jail based on the orders of a magistrate. To send a person to sub-jail (judicial custody) the police men has to produce him in front of a magistrate who will check the 'remand report' and then give an order to send the person to judicial custody. At this juncture the arrested man also gets a chance to say that he was tortured in custody. Or in very severe cases the magistrate would be able to see the health of the people.
Also note the clubbing of another case of murder. The two individuals who are being supported by EJs are involved in the murder of another person Jayakumar. And also note how the death of Mahendran which happened much later being clubbed with police torture which happened a month back.
Timeline of custodial deaths of Jayaraj and Bennix Felix in Tamil Nadu
The above report has the time line of events.
1. The two men are taken to the PS at 0819PM on 19June. Looks like they were detained in the police lockup.
2. On 20 June the police then taken both of them for a medical fitness test (at what time?) and also produces them in front of the judicial magistrate.
Here the police has followed the process in the correct way. The report is silent on what the magistrate ordered. Were they let off on bail? Sent back into police custody? Or were they remanded to judicial custody?
3. On 22 June (i.e three days after spending the night in the PS) the individuals admitted to the hospital die. Where were they during these three days? The hospital is said to be 100km away from the homes of the dead men.
There would be lots of paper audit trails about the whole case. Right from the FIR, station general dairy, medical fitness report and the magistrate's orders. But the EJs have built their own narrative.