Custodial deaths: Christian groups demand independent probe

By Jose Kavi

New Delhi, June 29, 2020: Several Christian groups in India have demanded an independent probe into the death of a father and his son in police custody in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu.

While the All India Catholic Union (AICU) seeks the probe by a High Court Judge, the Indian Christian Women’s Movement (ICWM) says a team of human rights activists and lawyer should conduct the investigation.

Condemning “the gruesome torture” and murder of the father and son, the Evangelical Fellowship of India (EFI) calls on “competent authorities” to ensure justice in the case.

AICU and Abraham Mathai, president of the Indian Christian Voice and former vice chairman of Minorities Commission in Maharashtra, see the custodial deaths as part of an ongoing persecution of Christians in Thoothukudi (formerly Tuticorin) district.

Mathai points out that the police officers accused of the custodial deaths “are believed to have also been involved in religious persecution and human rights violations earlier this year.”

AICU, the 101-year-old largest body Catholic lay people in India, alleges that the accused policemen “have been complicit in other custodial deaths in recent months, apart from fomenting caste clashes.”

The latest case started on June 19 when the police arrested P Jayaraj and his son J Bennix, both members of the Church of South India. They were then lodged in Kovilpatti sub jail in Thoothukudi for allegedly keeping their mobile phone shop in the city open beyond 9 pm, the deadline for closing business establishments under the lockdown norms.

AICU says Jayaraj was arrested after an altercation with the police. His son was arrested when he tried to protect his father from the blows of the police.

The two were taken to the police station in Sathankulam (pool of the devil) “on the pretext of an enquiry and were tortured by the policemen who inflicted severe injuries on the men.”

They were admitted to a government hospital on June 22. While the 31-year-old son died that same night, the father, who was 61, died next morning.

Observing that the two “had been beaten, brutally tortured, sodomized with rods,” an AICU statement on June 29 points out that the “police brutalization” has shocked the nation “which is still to come to terms with police atrocities in other states which have gone unchecked under the cover of the Covid curfew.”

The ICWM, the network of women from various Christian denominations, on June 29 wrote to federal Home Minister Amit Shah and Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Edapaddi Palanisami to demand “a just trial and commiserate punishment of the policemen, and others involved in the murder.”

“We are deeply shocked by the evidence of sexual torture of the men, apart from other brutal physical injuries,” the Christian women bemoan.

They assert that the deaths cannot be dismissed as “mere negligent acts” as they are the result of “the unholy nexus between the police, local judiciary and medical personnel.” They regret that the guilty policemen are not arrested even after a week.

Echoing the same views, the Evangelical Fellowship regrets that the accused officers, although suspended, are free to terrorize witnesses. “They must be arrested and charged with murder,” says a June 29 statement from the evangelical alliance founded in 1951.

The Catholic union and the women’s movement want the inquiry to study the conduct of the local magistrate and government doctors who handled the case.

“Magistrate P Saravanan did not bother to see their condition, and remanded them to police custody on June 20. Bleeding profusely, they were taken to a hospital almost on the verge of death,” the AICU statement regrets.

The Christian women say the magistrate and the doctors are equally guilty in the crime. The magistrate ruled the two men to be fit after watching them seated in a police van from far fearing coronavirus infection.

“It is observed that the government doctors to whom they were taken had given false certificates of health in spite of several hours of insane beating with lathis (baton) and other acts of brutality that they had to undergo,” the women explain.

AICU president Lancy D’Cunha wants the government to modernize police force and educate policemen and women to respect “human rights guaranteed to all people under the Constitution of India” and help them appreciate “the diversity of communities that exist in the country.”

He also wants the police trained “in modern forensic sciences instead of using third-degree methods on suspects, innocent or guilty, to solve crimes.”

Meanwhile Jesuit-managed St Xavier’s College of Management and Technology in Patna, eastern India, organized an online protest against the Tamil Nadu incident.

Addressing the participants on June 29, Congregation of Jesus Sister Cynthia Mathew, an NGO representative at the United Nations, termed the incident as “gross violation of human rights” and “blatant misuse of power” by policemen.

Sister Mathew, who is engaged in advocacy for women, Dalits and Adivasis at the UN, pointed out that as many as 1,731 people had died in police custody in India in 2019. The nun, who also practices law at Patna High Court and Buxar district court, regretted that India was yet to ratify the UN Convention against Torture.

Ashish Ranjan, convener of the National Alliance of People’s Movements, blamed democratic institutions in the country for failing Jayaraj and his son.

“They did not commit any crime. They were only guilty of violating the Covid-19 lockdown, which is a bailable offence,” said the former student of Florida International University, Miami.

Ranjan, who now lives in Bihar’s Araria town, drew a parallel between the Tamil Nadu incident and the killing of George Floyd by the police in the US in May that sparked worldwide outrage. He then urged the students to “rise now to protect human rights of ordinary citizens, law of the country and prevent police atrocities.” He also cited several cases of police brutalities, including blinding of prisoners in Bihar’s Bhagalpur.

In a series of incidents in 1979 and 1980, police in Bhagalpur, some 275 km southeast of Patna, blinded 31 undertrial prisoners by pouring acid into their eyes. The incident became infamous as the Bhagalpur blindings.