AGRA: A dhaba owner from Agra who had been arrested on March 25 died at a Delhi hospital on Sunday. His family said it was a case of custodial torture and death — he had been beaten up, threatened with “encounter” and his private parts doused in petrol when he didn’t run away as he had been asked to. Police said he died of rabies, reports Anuja Jaiswal.
Dharmendra, 27, used to run a dhaba. “Cops picked him up, saying there was a meeting of all dhaba owners at the police station before the panchayat election. The next day, he was sent to jail,” his elder brother Mukesh said. Police said he had been arrested for dealing in spurious liquor.
On April 3, his family got word that he was unwell and on April 4, he was moved to Delhi’s Maharishi Valmiki Infectious Diseases Hospital with a dog bite injury to his left foot, hydrophobia and aerophobia — the last two are symptoms of rabies. His family, however, dismissed theb possibility of his death from the disease. “He had never been bitten by a dog,” Mukesh said.
The cause of death, according to police, was rabies. “As per my investigation, he had been bitten by a dog two and a half months ago,” SP (east) K Venkat Ashok said.