KOLLAM: Radhika Rajeev, the 11-year-old daughter of Rajeev, the Dalit youth who was tortured in police custody, has not attended school for the last one week while her father was in the lockup. She says she can’t continue her studies as she fears her classmates will call her ‘the daughter of a thief’. The family me-mbers of the bright student are clueless about how to console her. A Class VI student at the Government HSS, Kavila, she is the only daughter of Mr Rajeev and Sathi of Ambooth-azhathil, Kanjiramkuzhy, in Injavila.
“Since the day her father was taken into custody, she has not gone to school. She did not even eat properly and was weeping all the time. The only daughter and her father were so affectionate to each other,” Meenu, Rajeev’s niece, said. She had to wait until Wednesday to meet her father at the lockup in Anjalumoodu police station, at the mercy of a policeman. Rajeev’s elder brother, persuaded by the girl’s laments, took her there. “My daughter studies well and is one among the bright students in the class,” Mr Rajeev, who is undergoing treatment at the district hospital here, told this newspaper.
“She burst into tears seeing my plight inside the lockup. We were trapped by the police knowing that there would be no one to ask even if something happened to us.” Police took Rajeev (31) and his uncle Shibu (40) into custody on false theft charges on Sunday and were brutally tortured for five days at Anjalumoodu and Kollam West police stations before they were set free on Friday, “acknowledging” their innocence.
