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Madras HC orders CID investigation into custodial death of TN man
Madras High Court orders CBCID probe into V Dinesh Kumar's death, amid family claims of police torture and a cover-up after his alleged escape.
The Madras High Court on Friday ordered a CBCID probe into the death of a 31-year-old man, V Dinesh Kumar in Madurai district after his family alleged a case of police custodial torture.
Kumar, was being taken to the Anna Nagar police station in Madurai on October 9 early morning on suspicion of selling ganja to children, according to the FIR, a copy of which HT has seen. But he died on the same day. While police say he escaped and drowned in a canal, his family alleges a cover up by the police.
A bench of justices Anita Sumanth and C Kumarappan of the Madurai bench of the Madras high court ordered for the postmortem of the victim to begin immediately and it started at 7pm on Friday.
The bench passed the order based on a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) filed by an advocate C Selvakumar seeking a CBCID probe, compensation and a government job for a member of the victim’s family.
Kumar was an employee in a private firm in Madurai. The victim’s mother, V Muthulaxmi, filed a complaint for the officers to be charged with murder alleging that they beat her son to death.
Police said that they first questioned Kumar and two of his friends, B Prakash and Ajith Kanna at the Vandiyur Amma Thidal checkpost in Madurai. When police were transporting all three men to the police station, the officers on duty said that Kumar tried to escape by running and died after he fell into a sewage canal. Police informed the Tallakulam fire station and firefighters recovered his body from the canal.
Inspector Flower Sheela wrote in the FIR that Kumar and his two friends have pending cases against them in the Anna Nagar police station. And on the morning of October 9, they received information that Kumar was dealing drugs while his two friends were planning a robbery. “We picked up all three of them from their house and at the check post we interrogated them. All three refused to give any information,” the inspector said in the FIR. After a few hours, the police took all of them in a patrol vehicle to take them to the station. “Suddenly Dinesh Kumar ran into the main road and jumped into a nearby canal. Eye witnesses said he was trying to swim but he had drowned.”
The court also directed authorities to save the CCTV footage of the three men kept by the police at the Vandiyur checkpost.
