The Hindu : Karnataka / Bangalore News : Custodial death cases on the rise, say human rights activists

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Saturday, Jun 28, 2008
ePaper | Mobile/PDA Version

Karnataka

Karnataka - Bangalore

Custodial death cases on the rise, say human rights activists

Special Correspondent

7,468 custodial deaths in the last five years in the country

‘4,800 acres of land taken from small farmers’
Farm workers slog 12 hours a day to get Rs. 18

Bangalore: As many as 7,468 people have died in judicial and police custody over the last five years in the country marking a steady increase in such deaths from 1,340 in 2004 to 1,597 in 2007.

Citing these figures at a seminar organised by the National Confederation of Human Rights Organisations on the occasion of International Day in Support of Torture Victims, Mathews Philip of South India Cell for Human Rights Education and Monitoring (SICHREM) argued for the repeal of all laws that give legitimacy to custodial torture.

The figures documented by the National Human Rights Commission, Mr. Philip said, were a tip of an ice-berg and did not document cases that did not result in death. A project of SICHREM, he added, had documented 648 cases of police torture in six districts of the State.

H. Pattabhirama Somayaji, a professor of English from Mangalore and executive committee member of the confederation, expressed concern over the “increasing attempts to create a commonsense in favour of torture” among common people.

He broadened the definition of torture to include attempts to rob people of their livelihood in the name of development, religion or maintenance of law and order.

In coastal Karnataka, 4,800 acres of land were being acquired for a special economic zone and small landholders who had got ownership in the course of the land reforms implemented by the former Chief Minister late D. Devaraj Urs were being forcibly stripped off their rights over fertile patches of land, he said.

Mohammad Salauddin, a software engineer living in Gurappanapalya, gave a testimonial at the seminar on how a posse of policemen had descended on his house in the middle of the night in search of his brother suspecting him to be a terrorist.

He said his daughter in class 2 had asked him: “Did they take away uncle and not you because he has a longer beard than you?”

Printer friendly page
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Karnataka