A disturbing police surveillance camera footage of the brutalisation of a Youth Congress worker at the Kunnumkulam police station in Thrissur in 2023 has sparked widespread shock and public outrage.
The terrifying video also reignited an emotional social debate on alleged law enforcement brutality, which the Opposition sought to weaponise against the Left Democratic Front (LDF) government on Thursday.
Solo fight
The case also seems to have become a poignant symbol of one person’s fight against an arguably pitiless and corrupt system. Notably, the victim, Sujith, a part-time temple priest, had released the incriminating footage, which he obtained through the Right to Information Act, after braving threats and inducements and expending scarce resources and time to surmount red tape and knotty legal objections.
Mr. Sujith said the police had arrested him after he questioned officers who “humiliatingly challenged” his friends at the venue of a temple festival. The government-attested video showed the police hustling Mr. Sujith out of a patrol vehicle at the Kunnumkulam station at night, stripping him off his shirt and taking turns in systematically beating him in the station house’s partitioned cubicles.
Cleared by blood test
Mr. Sujith alleged the officers repeatedly whipped the bottom of his feet with a bamboo cane at a surveillance camera blind spot and slapped him repeatedly on the ear, permanently impairing his hearing and causing irreversible nerve damage. Subsequently, the police arrested and remanded Mr. Sujith on charges of drunken rioting and attacking the police. A blood test conducted by government doctors cleared Mr. Sujith of the charge of alcohol impairment.
Leader of the Opposition V.D. Satheesan stated that the police let the errant officers off with a light reprimand. He said they ignored the Dy.SP Crime Detachment’s internal inquiry report that reportedly indicted the officers for causing grievous hurt, illegal detention, unlawful arrest, custodial torture and slapping of false charges.
Mr. Satheesan singled out DIG, Thrissur Range, Hari Shankar, for allegedly protecting the officers and reductively terming the grave crime and brazen human rights violation a minor infraction of law.
Moreover, Mr. Satheesan noted that the errant officers continued in service, with a token cut to their annual increments. He wrote a letter to Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan demanding the immediate dismissal of the suspect officers from service.
Meanwhile, Congress workers held street demonstrations demanding justice for Mr. Sujith, resulting in clashes with the police and injuries on both sides.
