Mar
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Deaths under police custody
March 12, 2005 | Comments Off on Deaths under police custody
Two of the three policemen responsible for the death of Satnam, a Dalit from Lohian village in Jalandhar, surrendered to the police on March 2. ASI Vijay Kumar, Head Constable Surjit Malik, and Home Guard Balkar Singh are the three responsible for Satnam’s death; Vijay Kumar is still evading arrest.
The morning of February 6, the police took Satnam to the station and tortured him after he refused to accept his involvement in a theft case. The police released Satnam in the evening, and his family rushed him to the hospital, where he was declared dead on arrival. Satnam’s wife, Jasbir Kaur, registered the case with the police.
In another case regarding custodial death, a magisterial inquiry has indicted Station House Officer Baldev Raj and other police officers. The magistrate’s report concluded that the police officers had tortured Rakesh Kumar to death.
A perusal of the postmortem report, giving details of 12 injuries found on the person of the deceased, established beyond doubt that he was brutally tortured while in police custody, said the report.
Rakesh Kumar, a Dalit from Rakran Dhahan village in Nawanshahr district, died in police custody on June 7. Head constable Ram Kishan and constable Jatinder Singh of the Balachaur police had taken him in to custody the day before in connection with a theft case. The next day, they tampered with police documents and reported that he had committed suicide while in their custody, which sparked protest in the area.
The roznamcha, a crucial document in the police station, was tampered with, its pages (numbers 5 and 6) were changed and it was re-stitched after incorporating wrong entries.
The magistrate’s report concluded that Baldev Raj and others had re-stitched the roznamcha to create false evidence.
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