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A wrte up on police tortures is sent to Cherukole Group
The Abu Ghraibs of Kerala
Saji P.George May 30, 2004
On the wee hours of October 4th last year, Police in the most literate state of India raided a village called Killi close to Trivandrum, the capital city. The Police contingent was searching for somebody allegedly obstructed Police personnel on traffic checking duty, the previous week. The large troop of Armed Police Force wantonly broke doors to enter houses, destroyed furniture, stolen ornaments and subjected men, women and children to dreadful physical torture and sexual abuse. The Police entered houses one after another dragged men and women from bedrooms throne them out, kicked and beaten heavily until they collapsed down. The attack was targeted mostly on men. They were stripped before family members and later forced to parade naked before women officers. In the lockups cops made fun by tickling their genitals. Many of the innocent victims were relatives and the psychological damage is irreparable.
When I visited the village along with a fact-finding team of Tiruvalla Sangham, two weeks later, ransacked houses were still kept unchanged. Faces were frozen with a mixture of grief and fear painted on them and people were unable to get rid of what happened. The people who suffered at Killi were not the powerless, down caste and poverty stricken; the rummaged houses not mere sheds on the pavements. Many of the dwellings were two storied with fine marble floorings and posh furniture. Some of them own private cars too. Yet it happened to them!
Journalists in the nearby city of Trivandrum were talking of the sexual abuse inflicted up on women; women were abused, true. But they were not targeted; they came in the way only. The public sexual abuse inflicted up on men got little coverage. An activists of the CPIM told me--about sexual harassment of men-- this is something that goes on and on in every Police Stations. But here when the policemen went out of their cliché, media workers and politicians were still clinging on to theirs.
What they say is correct. In this country, reports of Police torture and Sexual abuse of those in custody are not News. They don’t buy curiosity.
None of the Policemen told in public-or leaked in secret - about the criminal acts of fellow officers. Such an event did never occur in the history of my model state barring one Ramachandran Nair, a police constable long after his retirement did open his mouth in tune with a conscience burdened by the shooting-down-at-order of a brave Marxist Leninist worker.
Let us leave out the Police, we are giving them a training –formal and informal- that turn them into beating machines. There are many civilian officers who are involved in the matter of crime and its victims. Take the case of doctors. In almost all custodial deaths the persons were taken before a doctor at least after they are finished. In cases of severe torture Police would normally hospitalize victims to prevent death and its consequences. Then these victims are before the doctor as a patient- to whose health he is legally and ethically responsible.
Take again the Magistrates who are supposed to administer justice. When an arrested person is produced before them, step one of their job is asking a question regarding how they were treated in Police hands. They all ask it and then mock at the procedural codes.
Not very long before the reputed tribal leader Ms Janu was taken before a magistrate with swollen cheeks. The mockery was repeated now under the full glare of media. None did scold the magistrate. A magistrate is usually an advocate passing a law examination and interview. It is very unlikely that an Ex-Service man occupy the seat. Yet they do comply always to the system.
Why is it that these professionals are unable to speak out and take the minimum risk to which they are obliged? Why they are not protesting when they witness a thing that mocks the basic tenets of what they are employed for? Why they don’t get “demoralized” at these? Why the media workers fail to ask them? Why do not we all feel disgust at these failures?
The Humanism of the People of Kerala has never failed the world community in expressing anger to what America does in Iraq. We Love to be in the for front of anti America. But I feel shame! And I feel we must earn the eligibility to point fingers at the earliest, as it is very urgent. For this, I think we have a lot to learn from Americans, from the members of its military itself, until we find some of our Policemen and civilian officers protesting against human abuses they witness and speak out or at least leak out, truth, to uphold the dignity of their humanness as well as that of their respective professions and they get rewarded.
Monday, May 31, 2004
Thursday, May 27, 2004
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