It was only when the police contacted Farzana Khan on February 2 that she came to know that her husband Khadeer was taken into custody by the police on January 29 and assaulted mercilessly. Thirty-six-year-old Mohammed Khadeer Khan, who was detained by the Medak police as a suspect in a theft case, died on Thursday, February 16 while undergoing treatment at Gandhi Hospital in Hyderabad. The police had called Farzana after it was verified that Khadeer had no role in the theft.
The family has alleged that custodial torture led to his death. “When I went to collect him the same day, Khadeer told me he was taken away by the Medak police and brutally beaten at the station. When I asked the police, they told me they had CCTV footage of a chain-snatching incident in which the accused resembled Khadeer. They told me the accused had long hair and had covered his face with a handkerchief. They weren’t really sure that Khadeer was behind the incident,” Farzana told TNM. The 36-year-old’s Aadhar card still shows her name as Siddeshwari, the name she was known by before she converted prior to her marriage to Khadeer.
Khadeer, who lived in Medak with Farzana and their three kids, was a daily wage labourer who took up different jobs to make a living. Farzana stitched blouses to make ends meet. She had fought with Khadeer over the family’s rising debts and headed to Kamareddy in January.
“I can vouch for the fact that Khadeer would never have snatched that woman’s chain, as the police are alleging. He wasn’t that kind of a man,” Farzana repeated to TNM several times.
She said the police made them sign a note saying Khadeer was brought to the station the previous day and released the next day. “I don’t know to read and write, they told me it was part of the release procedure, so I signed the note. I later realised that the note said Khadeer was kept in custody only for one night,” she said.
According to Farzana, though Khadeer was in severe pain, they were asked not to go to the hospital and stay at home for at least a week. “The police checked on us once a day to ensure that we were at home. Though Khadeer was in immense pain and wasn’t able to pass urine, I was told he would be fine in a few days. I believed them,” said Farzana.
When Khadeer didn’t get better even after a few days, Farzana went to the Collector’s office and requested help. “I was asked to submit a petition and return after a week,” Farzana recalled. A few days later, the police themselves got Khadeer admitted to a private hospital in the outskirts of Hyderabad. It was later that he was referred to state-run Gandhi Hospital.
Even there, Farzana recalled being threatened and intimidated. “A man who said he was a friend of one of the policemen threatened us and tried to snatch away my husband’s prescriptions. I refused to part with them,” she said.
After Khadeer was picked up from his sister’s house in Hyderabad’s Yakutpura on January 29, he was brought to Medak. In a video statement while undergoing treatment at a hospital in the town, he alleged that he was kept in custody for five days and beaten up by the police though he kept telling them that he was innocent. “The police said the person involved looks like me,” he had said.
The police let Khadeer go on February 2, by which time he was unable to move his hands. “The police asked me to sign a document saying that I was kept in custody only for one night. As I was unable to even hold the pen, one of the policemen signed the paper,” Khadeer had recounted in his statement.
On February 18, the Telangana Director General of Police (DGP) directed Inspector General of Police (IGP) Chandrasekhar Reddy to start an investigation into the custodial torture allegations and entrust it to a senior officer from Kamareddy. The IGP has been directed to supervise the investigation.
While the DGP’s office said that disciplinary action has been initiated against the Inspector and the Sub Inspector involved, demand has been growing to book those behind the custodial torture under sections of murder.