Will the out­rage over the in­hu­man bru­tal tor­ture of P. Je­yaraj and his son Em­manuel Ben­nicks, early this week in Tamil Nadu have any ef­fect on the po­lice? When the Madras High Court ap­pointed of­fi­cer, went to pre­pare a ju­di­cial re­port, the guilty po­lice sub-in­spec­tor, “You can­not do any­thing to me.” The Court is seek­ing trans­fer of po­lice per­son­nel and not their dis­missal from ser­vice. Po­lice bru­tal­ity videos dur­ing lock­down have be­numbed peo­ple and the gov­ern­ment looks the other way. 3 cus­to­dial deaths re­ported in Delhi last week. In­ter­na­tion­ally In­dia de­nies tor­ture. That is why it is a tor­ture pan­demic we are suf­fer­ing for the last 7 decades. WSN joins the #Jus­tice­For­Je­yara­jAnd­Ben­nicks cam­paign and ed­i­tor Jag­mo­han Singh con­demns the mal­treat­ment and ex­tra­ju­di­cial cus­to­dial killing of the fa­ther-son duo, seeks ex­em­plary com­pen­sa­tion for the fam­ily and trial of the guilty po­lice of­fi­cers for mur­der.

THE BRU­TAL TOR­TURE OF 62-YEAR-OLD P. JE­YARAJ AND HIS SON EM­MAN­NUEL BEN­NICKS from 19 June to 22 June, at the Sathanku­lam po­lice sta­tion, near Thoothukudi in Tamil Nadu, the re­mand given by the mag­is­trate with­out hear­ing the fam­ily and with­out see­ing the two ac­cused who were pro­fusely bleed­ing and had come from a hos­pi­tal, is a gross de­nial of jus­tice and a shame­ful act putting hu­man­ity to shame.

The Tor­ture Pan­demic is en­demic in In­dia for decades. The In­dian state of Tamil Nadu has a no­to­ri­ous record of cus­to­dial deaths and tor­ture in cus­tody. Across In­dia, patho­log­i­cally sick po­lice per­son­nel, un­con­cerned mag­is­tracy, non-func­tion­ing State Hu­man Rights Com­mis­sions, po­lit­i­cal im­punity to erring po­lice from the low­est ranks to the high­est ech­e­lons, per­ma­nent de­nial mode of the Union gov­ern­ment to the preva­lence of tor­ture in the coun­try at var­i­ous na­tional and in­ter­na­tional fo­rums, the glo­ri­fi­ca­tion of tor­ture in Bol­ly­wood and Toll­wood movies, zero train­ing in sci­en­tific po­lice meth­ods, the con­sign­ment of all po­lice re­forms re­ports to the dust­bins, the gen­eral pub­lic im­mune to im­ages and videos of tor­ture on the streets by po­lice­men and po­lice­women dur­ing the lock­down pe­riod across the coun­try -have all led to the po­lice con­tin­u­ing their sys­tem­atic tor­ture in the four walls of po­lice sta­tions and spe­cially des­ig­nated po­lice sta­tions where tor­ture is a norm.

Gen­eral sec­re­tary LFHRI, hu­man rights ac­tivist and Pun­jab and Haryana High Court lawyer Navki­ran Singh says, “It is high time that we ini­ti­ate a con­certed cam­paign to en­sure that per­pe­tra­tors of cus­to­dial crimes do not go un­pun­ished. Lawyers For Hu­man Rights In­ter­na­tional -LFHRI, strongly con­demns the in­hu­man cus­to­dial tor­ture lead­ing to the death of the fa­ther-son duo -Jeyraj and Benicks.”

Ac­cord­ing to me­dia re­ports, Ben­nicks was de­tained and tor­tured be­cause he had protested the beat­ing of his aged fa­ther while he was there at the po­lice sta­tion to seek his re­lease.  His crime was that he had kept his shop open a few min­utes be­yond the lock­down hours. Sus­tained tor­ture over 3 days re­sulted in two lives be­ing snuffed out by a bunch of 13 po­lice of­fi­cers at the po­lice sta­tion in­clud­ing some vol­un­teers of so-called Friends of Po­lice, watch­ing them, but not stop­ping them.

A hu­man rights de­fender said, “Don’t think that this is an iso­lated in­ci­dent. It can hap­pen to you and me too.”

“It is high time that we ini­ti­ate a con­certed cam­paign to en­sure that per­pe­tra­tors of cus­to­dial crimes do not go un­pun­ished.

Navki­ran Singh, Gen­eral Sec­re­tary, Lawyers For Hu­man Rights In­ter­na­tional

It is un­for­tu­nate that even af­ter 70 years of in­de­pen­dence, de­spite In­di­a’s de­nial of tor­ture at var­i­ous UN and in­ter­na­tional fo­rums, tor­ture in po­lice cus­tody as a bar­baric po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tion method con­tin­ues. Third-de­gree is the norm to ex­tract de­tails from ac­cused dur­ing a po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

Ad­vo­cate Navki­ran Singh of the Lawyers for Hu­man Rights In­ter­na­tional said that “though there is ram­pant po­lice tor­ture in In­dia and more so in Tamil Nadu, there is no pro­vi­sion in the In­dian Pe­nal code to deal with cus­to­dial crimes. Though In­dia has signed the United Na­tions Con­ven­tion against Tor­ture and other Cruel, In­hu­man and De­grad­ing Treat­ment or Pun­ish­ment’ in 1997, but has till date not rat­i­fied the res­o­lu­tion. Even the Pre­ven­tion of Tor­ture Bill 2017 could not at­tain its fi­nal­ity. So, it is should not come as a sur­prise that cus­to­dial crimes go un­pun­ished in the ab­sence of spe­cific strict laws.”

Though In­dia has signed the United Na­tions Con­ven­tion against Tor­ture and other Cruel, In­hu­man and De­grad­ing Treat­ment or Pun­ish­ment’ in 1997, but has till date not rat­i­fied the res­o­lu­tion

It has been re­ported that the Tamil Nadu gov­ern­ment has sus­pended the sub-in­spec­tor and oth­ers who mal­treated the fa­ther and son. This is sim­ply not enough. The sadis­tic po­lice of­fi­cials who con­ducted the tor­ture must be dis­missed from po­lice ser­vice, ar­rested and tried for first-de­gree cold-blooded mur­der.

A for­mer judge of the Madras High Court K Chan­dru has rightly said that “the lat­est lock­down sce­nario had shifted full pow­ers to the po­lice and bu­reau­cracy.”

“The lat­est lock­down sce­nario had shifted full pow­ers to the po­lice and bu­reau­cracy.”

K. Chan­dru, For­mer Jus­tice Madras High Court

The Hindu has ed­i­to­ri­ally com­mented that “The top brass of the po­lice too will have to bear re­spon­si­bil­ity for this atroc­ity as it in­di­cates a sig­nal fail­ure to lay down norms for po­lice­men on the field to han­dle lock­down vi­o­la­tions with hu­mane­ness.”

WSN URGES YOU TO SIGN THE PE­TI­TION AD­DRESSED TO THE SUPREME COURT OF IN­DIA seek­ing Jus­tice for the fa­ther-son duo and es­tab­lish­ment of Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­ity. 

Naam Tami­lar Katchi leader See­man said, “It is a grue­some act of mur­der per­pe­trated by the po­lice who are sup­posed to pro­tect. It shows how badly peo­ple are treated and the per­ni­cious nexus be­tween the pow­er­ful lead­ers and the po­lice, the ram­pant cor­rup­tion and bribery, work­ing in tan­dem against the com­mon man. A case of mur­der must be reg­is­tered against the po­lice of­fi­cials. The Tamil Nadu gov­ern­ment must im­me­di­ately ter­mi­nate the guilty who car­ried out the tor­ture and even those who silently wit­nessed the bar­baric mal­treat­ment.”

“It is a grue­some act of mur­der per­pe­trated by the po­lice who are sup­posed to pro­tect.”

See­man, Chief Co­or­di­na­tor, Naam Tami­lar Katchi

UN­ADAP in a mis­sive to Tamil Nadu chief min­is­ter Edap­padi Palaniswami has said that “it is alarmed at the “crimes against hu­man­ity” of the bru­tal killings and sex­ual tor­ture of a fa­ther and son in Tu­ti­corin by the state po­lice.”

Ex­ec­u­tive Di­rec­tor of UN­ADAP -United Na­tions As­so­ci­a­tion for De­vel­op­ment And Peace Dr Do­minic F Dixon has sought pro­tec­tion to the fam­ily of the de­ceased, le­gal rep­re­sen­ta­tion, fi­nan­cial com­pen­sa­tion and charg­ing the po­lice of­fi­cers re­spon­si­ble for the death of the fa­ther-son duo with homi­cide and rape.

“It is heart­break­ing to read about ex­treme po­lice bru­tal­ity. It’s shock­ing and painful to learn how TN po­lice have turned out to be so re­venge­ful, so bar­baric and so cruel.”

Kan­war Pal Singh, Spokesper­son, Dal Khalsa

Con­demn­ing the cus­to­dial deaths of P Je­yaraj and his son Emanuele Benicks in po­lice cus­tody in Tu­ti­corin, Dal Khalsa spokesper­son Kan­war Pal Singh said “it is heart­break­ing to read about ex­treme po­lice bru­tal­ity. It’s shock­ing and painful to learn how TN po­lice have turned out to be so re­venge­ful, so bar­baric and so cruel.”

“Im­punity pro­vided by var­i­ous In­dian laws to se­cu­rity forces from Kash­mir to Pun­jab to Tamil Nadu to all over the coun­try is the root cause of bar­barism and bru­tal­ity un­leashed by cen­tral and state po­lice on its peo­ple,” he added.