Warangal: A fact-finding team comprising six members from the National Confederation of Human Rights Organisations (NCHRO) and two from the State Human Rights Commission visited Warangal on Sunday to investigate the allegations of custodial death of a petty vendor Abdul Mannan in Warangal.
According to the team members, Abdul Mannan, a native of Nawla village in Muzaffarnagar district in Uttar Pradesh and a resident of Shivanagar, died on April 27 while in police custody.
Following a complaint by the brother of the victim, the Telangana State Minority Commission issued a notice to the Warangal Urban district collector and the Warangal commissioner of police a few days ago asking them to submit a detailed report regarding the incident to the Commission within a week.
One of the team members, Suresh Kumar, an advocate in the High Court of judicature, said, “As part of our investigations we spoke to the family members of the victim, their neighbours in Shivanagar and to the doctors at MGM hospital.”
After our interactions, we concluded that the victim was in no way associated with any criminal organisation. He was arrested by the police without any reasons and was subjected to mental and physical harassment without being given food or water which led to his eventual death on the same day at the MGM hospital, he added
Mr Suresh said, “We are considering this as a custodial death. Throughout the day, as we were conducting our investigation, police kept obstructing us in different ways. They kept asking us to come to the police station and speak to them, which we eventually intend to do to get their version. If they had given the victim a bottle of water at the police station, he would have been alive today. This committee believes that the police is involved in unlawful activities which lead to a person’s death. We are here to bring out the facts in a lawful manner and identify who is responsible for his death.”
