‘Cops pushed my aunt, dragged me’: Kerala Dalit colony residents allege police excess

Though she had been hard at work preparing for the UPSC Civil Services examinations over the past two years, 24-year-old Shruthi, of Chaambakkandam Dalit colony near Kayamkulam in Kerala’s Alappuzha, did not show up for the preliminary exams held on Sunday, June 5. Instead, she lies on a hospital bed, badly injured on her hands, legs and forehead, as her relatives occupy some of the beds around her. Shruthi had received the injuries while trying to prevent the arrest of her brothers at her colony, in the wee hours of Sunday.

“I live with my brothers, who have been remanded. We don’t have parents. I don’t know what to do,” Shruthi tells TNM, attempting to hold her tears back. “I had been preparing for this examination for two years. All of my efforts have gone in vain now,” she adds in a shaky voice. Her brothers, Sarath Babu and Ajith Babu, were arrested after an alleged blatant police excess took place in the colony on the fateful night. According to the youngster, a night patrolling team of three police officers started to interrogate her cousin and misbehave with him, and then proceeded to try and arrest him for no reason.

“When the police officers saw my cousin and his friend — who had come to drop him home after work — standing outside the former’s house, they approached them and asked why they were standing there. My cousin responded that this was his house, but the officers wanted proof. So he pointed to my uncle and aunt, and told them that they were his parents. But the officers then asked him and his friend to get into the police vehicle. When my aunt came running outside, the officer asked her if they had the title deed for the house, which she had,” Shruthi recalls.

It was after hearing the commotion outside that Shruthi and her brothers, who lived close by, reached the spot and asked the police what was going on. “They were not giving us any reason. One of the officers pushed my aunt and she fell. When they saw that I was trying to save her, I was also pushed. I fell down and my forehead was injured,” she says. Shruthi’s aunt has also been admitted to the hospital alongside her.

When Shruthi tried to stop the police from arresting her brothers without a warrant or any specific reason, she was dragged on the road by the police, she alleges, pointing out that they did not even have women officers with them. Besides, all three officers who were on patrol were drunk, she says. “The home guard also slapped my cousin, without any provocation.”

In a video of the incident, shot by someone in the colony, a police officer can be heard calling the control room, stating that their vehicle was being blocked because they questioned a person in the colony under suspicious circumstances. “After this call, four police jeeps came to the spot. This was after 1 am,” Shruthi recalls. The police went on to forcibly arrest her brothers and her cousin’s friend Vishwaprasad. “My cousin and his friend were simply standing on the compound of the former’s house. My brothers, who don’t even have a petty case against them, had just come outside after hearing all the commotion. The police have still not told us why they were arrested. What happened here was a human rights violation,” she says.

Based on the allegation that the officers had illegally entered the houses in the Dalit colony and made casteist remarks against some of the residents, the Kerala State SC/ST Commission had on Sunday sought a report from the Alappuzha Superintendent of Police. BS Mavoji, Chairman of the Commission, while speaking to PTI termed the police action as "high-handed", adding that the Commission had taken up the issue on its own based on news reports of the incident.

According to the police version, the three persons were arrested for “actively obstructing the officers from doing their duty”. “The officers were on routine patrol in the colony and had noticed two persons standing beside a motorbike outside one of the houses. They had questioned them as to why they were standing there late at night. Soon, other residents of the colony came out and objected to the police questioning the duo,” said an officer at the Kareelakulangara Police Station, under whose jurisdiction the colony falls.

The officer said that the situation escalated after more people turned up, following which the local residents blocked the police jeep, removed its key and also assaulted the police officers. “Subsequently, more police personnel under the leadership of the Kayamkulam Deputy Superintendent of Police had to be called in to rescue the officers and arrest three persons who had actively obstructed them from doing their duty,” said the officer, according to whom it was the patrolling officers who were abused and assaulted by some of the residents in the colony.

A case under Sections 146 (rioting), 332 (voluntarily causing hurt to deter public servant from his duty) and 353 (assault or criminal force to deter public servant from discharge of his duty) of the Indian Penal Code has been lodged against the arrested trio, he added.

Though the police have stood by the claim that the duo was found under “suspicious circumstances”, they did not mention why they continued to question the youngsters even after coming to know that they were simply standing outside their house.

With PTI Inputs