VELLORE: Any official query about custodial deaths, will receive a standard response in the Vellore-Tiruvannamalai region: “None on record in the past half decade”. The reply from the District Crime Records Bureau is almost polished. “There have been a few,” admits Patrick*, a police officer in Vellore, “But how they get reported on paper is what makes the difference between a scandal and a smooth ending.”Archaic MethodologyPerhaps the biggest reason for the rare death and quite a few bruised backs is that archaic methods are used by cops for everything from simple intimidation to quickfire interrogation. Putting the long handle of the lathi to heavy use, most cops agree this is the simplest and safest form of retribution for petty crimes they can dish out.Sample this: Rajashekar*, an inspector recounts an incident of eve-teasing from when he was stationed in the district. “I caught two boys who grabbed a girl’s breast in public. They were second-year Commerce students and were drunk. I gave the girl the choice between booking a case or leaving them to me with the assurance that I would teach them a lesson overnight.” She chose the latter. “I had them undressed and chastised them with this (his lathi) for three hours. I doubt they will think of eve-teasing again,” he says.A phrase popularised by Kollywood films laadam katradhu, where the suspect is suspended upside down and beaten, is used “whenever a suspect needs it”, says Sub-Inspector Manickam* from a taluk station. “We avoid the base of the head, the solar plexus and the groin but sometimes these things don’t matter when the crimes are heinous,” he adds. Battering the soles of the feet is also an effective means of eliciting information, he says.“In the villages and rural pockets, only force works,” says Manickam. Fuelled by an almost ‘clean’ record, policemen like ‘Bhai’, a senior SI from Pernambut proudly claims he is not afraid to use force, despite having allegedly faced a National Human Rights Committee panel for ‘inhuman violence on a suspect’. Pickpockets and rowdies know his duty chart better than he does, “and it’s all thanks to the harshness that I have towards wrong-doers,” he says.OUT OF SIGHT, OUT OF LUCKThe most recent suspicious death of a person in police custody took place this February when cops escorted a rape-murder suspect from Chennai to Vandawasi. The case had caused a lot of brouhaha because a techie from Tambaram was found raped and murdered in Vandawasi on January 29. Police worked fast and sources confirm that Dinesh (27), was taken into custody between February 2-3. Police were certain that he was the one who had commissioned three auto drivers to kill the woman and dump her body far away, after he allegedly raped her.On the morning of February 7, Dinesh was being brought from Chennai to Vandawasi to be remanded when he suddenly started a vomiting fit at 3 am. The cops on duty claim they took him to the Vandawasi GH where he was pronounced dead by the doctors soon after. Though the post-mortem examination was conducted before a magistrate, the results were “inconclusive on cause of death” and suggested that a combination of heart palpitations and dehydration did him in. The police have launched an “in-department” inquiry of sorts, explains an officer who investigated the case, but the findings are quite evident, he concludes wryly.*names changed
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