Four police personnel from the Kilikollur police station on Kerala’s Kollam district were placed under suspension on Thursday, October 20, after being found responsible for custodial torture of a soldier and his brother. The police had brutally tortured two young men Vishnu and Vignesh, at Kilikollur police station on August 26 and kept them in custody for 12 days. Kollam Police Commissioner Merin Joseph told TNM all the four erring officials in the case were suspended, following an internal probe into the incident. Vishnu, a soldier and his younger brother Vignesh were tortured by Station House Officer Vinod K, Sub-Inspector Aneesh KP, Assistant Sub-Inspector Prakash Chandran and Civil Police Officer Manikantan Pillai.
Vignesh is a worker of the Democratic Youth Federation of India (DYFI), the youth wing of the CPI(M). The incident that led to the custodial torture began in August. Vignesh told the media that he was summoned to the Kilikollur police station by civil police officer Manikantan Pillai. Pillai asked Vignesh to stand surety for bail for a man named Ananthu. Manikantan did not reveal the details of the case on the phone and when Vignesh reached the station, he realised that Ananthu was an accused in a drug case and refused to get involved in it. Vignesh’s brother Vishnu, an army man who was on leave for his wedding, later went to the police station to pick up his brother when the incident happened.
“I am a DYFI worker and also I have made it into a list of the Kerala Public Service Commission (PSC). At that time, Additional Sub-Inspector Prakash Chandran arrived at the station. He was inebriated and started a brawl. This was the beginning of everything. He slapped my brother when he told him that he was a soldier. He was in mufti then. It should be probed whether he was even on duty at that time. My brother tried to stop him when he (Prakash Chandran) was about to slap him and a scuffle ensued,” Vignesh told Media One. Even before Vishnu arrived at the police station, he had been questioned by Prakash Chandran on the road, as the scooter Vishnu was riding had almost hit an auto-rickshaw.
According to the family, the policemen were initially angry that the brothers refused to sign a surety and later the fight intensified as the duo asked if Prakash Chandran was drunk. They demanded that the policeman undergo a medical test. “The three other policemen who were on duty then surrounded us asking if we dared to slap a police officer. They removed the mundu my brother was wearing and dragged him into a room in which there was no camera. I was also taken to the room, and I saw him being brutally assaulted. SHO Aneesh even told me on face that he is a criminal and has tortured many people. He hit me so badly that I almost lost my consciousness. They had handcuffed me, and I used my hands to cover my face, so he kept hitting my fingers trying to break them,” Vignesh said.
The policemen who had earlier been told by Vignesh about his aspirations to join the police force since he was on the Public Service Commission list, were particularly brutal and broke his fingers saying that he should never be able to pull the trigger on a gun. Both Vishnu and Vignesh were kept in the police custody for 12 days and later released.
An internal inquiry was conducted after the brothers filed a complaint with the police department after being released. Initially, the department transferred the four cops to different stations based on the inquiry report in October. However, the custodial torture hit the headlines after Vignesh began talking to the media. By Wednesday, October 19, the media began to publish the news of the torture along with pictures of the bruises.
To make matters worse for the victims, on August 26, the police issued a statement that a soldier and his brother were arrested for their links with the accused in an MDMA (drug case). According to Vignesh and his mother, Vishnu's marriage was cancelled after the media published the news. The police in the statement reportedly said that the siblings who came to release an accused in the MDMA case on bail, assaulted the police and the Assistant Sub-Inspector was injured in the fracas. “A picture of my brother was published in a newspaper linking him to a drug case, and this resulted in his marriage being cancelled. He was in love with a woman for five to six years, and they were about to marry and now he is shattered. They broke my leg and injured my hand. I can't even hold a spoon now,” he added.