SHRC seeks report from DGP: Driver's kin allege custodial murder

KANNUR: The State Human Rights Commission (SHRC) has asked the DGP to get the report of the auto driver who was allegedly killed in police torture in Kannur. The order came after the complaint of relatives of Edakkad native Unais (32), who was found dead at his home on May 2. Relatives allege that he died as a result of police torture. According to Unais’s brother Navas, Edakad police took him into custody on February 7 on a complaint filed by Unais’s father-in-law that he torched his scooter.

“He was brutally assaulted by the SHO and seven civil police men at Edakkad station before letting him go in the evening. Unais got admitted to a hospital on the next day itself as he was unable to stand straight and was vomiting blood,” alleged Navas. According to Navas, he was in the hospital for five days and the hospital considered the case as a medico-legal in light of the police torture. Unais was discharged and later died in his house on May 2.

Relatives say that Unais had wrote a letter to the district police chief at the hospital detailing the police torture and the same had been attached by the relatives along with the complaint to the SHRC.  But Edakkad SHO, Mahesh Kannampath denied the charge. “Unais was taken for questioning only. The postmortem report doesn’t mention about police excess,” he told Deccan Chronicle. 

According to the SHO, the hospital had only recorded the complaint of the relatives that the cause for Unais’s sickness was police assault. “Unais was a drug user. The postmortem report has the details of syringe injected points in his body and the marks. Besides, evidence of Unais using brown sugar was found from the room where he was found dead,” the SHO elaborated. The cop said that police is waiting for the lab result of the sample of the mortal remains of Unais.