Years after the Emergency was lifted, when C Achutha Menon was leading a retired life, the former Kerala chief minister made a confession: “There is a deep wound in my heart that will never heal. It is the Rajan incident. I was the chief minister. But the police told me that the boy was not taken into custody. So when his father Eachara Warrier, a very close friend of mine, came and told me 'Menon, my son has been nabbed by the police' I said: 'You want me to put on my shirt and go out and find him'. I shouldn't have told this to a father who had lost his son,” said the man who many consider to be the state's finest ever chief minister.
To have their way, the police had no qualms about lying even to the chief minister. A hundred more fathers and mothers had pleaded for the lives of their sons in the years that followed but the police continue to have their way.
On July 25 two serving policemen were sentenced to death for the cold-blooded murder of Udayakumar, a 28-year-old rag picker. Udayakumar was working in a park in the capital when these policemen who were doing their rounds found Rs 4,000 in his pocket. They right away concluded it was stolen. Udayakumar said the money was given to him by his mother to buy provisions for Onam. This was too much money with a rag picker, they said, and hauled him to the police station where he was savagely beaten up. And when he kept mumbling through the pain that it was his mother's money, they forcefully rolled a heavy iron rod over his body crushing his arteries. He bled to death.
A lesson left untouched
This is what Prabhavathi Amma, Udayakumar's mother, said after hearing the death sentence to the two cops convicted in the case. “No mother should suffer my fate ever again. This should be a lesson.” Just a few days ago, on July 17, a 19-year-old boy, Vinayakan, who was talking to his girlfriend was picked up by the police in Thrissur saying he was involved in chain-snatching and drug use. Their evidence: the boy's rakish hairstyle, kohl-rimmed eyes and earstuds. That Vinayakan was doing a beautician's course and was also running a salon did not matter.
Finding no better evidence, the boy was let off the very day itself. But next day morning, the teenager was found hanging in his bedroom. Autopsy revealed signs of bestiality: marks of boots that crushed his toes and abrasions that suggested his left nipple was squeezed cruelly. Two policemen were suspended.
And now, barely three months after Prabhavati Amma's warning, a young man, Sanalkumar, was killed when he was pushed in front of a speeding vehicle by a DySP. Perhaps more shocking was the callousness of junior policemen who felt that their duty shift was more important than a man battling for life. Instead of rushing Sanalkumar to the hospital, they first took the ambulance straight to the police station, as though the injured man at the back was a worthless bundle that no one would mind even if delivered late.
An elaborate charade
This utter disregard for human life has lately become the theme of policing in Kerala. Police atrocities of such primitive nature and scant respect for human rights are said to be true of many North Indian states. But in Kerala, ruled by the Communists who have come up braving police excesses, there is an attempt to frame the police as responsible.
It seems to be working, too. The Kerala Police Facebook page, which attempts to creatively counter the charges against the force, is the most popular in the country. But this elaborate charade of being a sensitive police force crumbles in the shocking light of what is happening in the state with increasing frequency.
This April, 26-year-old S R Sreejith, who was suffering from severe stomach pain, was dragged out of his house at Varappuzha in Kochi and taken to the police station. Later, he died of severe intestinal injuries in the hospital. Sreejith was among the 10 people who were picked up by the police for vandalising a home in the neighbourhood, an incident that eventually led to the suicide of the house owner. Even the deceased man's son had said Sreejith was not involved.
It was this shocking apathy that was on show when 21-year-old Neenu rushed to Gandhi Nagar police station near Kottayam on May 26 to complain about the missing of Kevin, a 23-year-old Dalit Christian youth she was to marry that day. The police made her wait for hours and then told her that it was not possible to search for him as they had to provide security for the chief minister who was in the area that day. Two days later Kevin's body was found floating in a canal nearby. It was an honour killing, and the police suspected nothing. They were busy protecting the chief minister.
Reward for negligence
It looks like the policemen, the worst among them, know that they can get away with even criminal negligence. They are deprived of nothing. The first accused in the Udayakumar custodial death case K Jithakumar, who was a civil police officer at the time of the crime, was an additional sub-inspector with the District Crime Records Bureau at the time of conviction. The second accused, S V Sreekumar, who was also a civil police officer when the crime was committed, was promoted to senior civil police officer under Thiruvananthapuram City Narcotic Cell.
Assembly records put out earlier this year showed that there were 1129 criminals in the police force, and this include 10 DySPs (Harikumar who pushed Sanalkumar to death does not figure), 8 CIs, and 195 SIs and ASIs. Among them, the hardened criminals — men charged with crimes ranging from corruption to extortion to sexual abuse and murder — were 387. A high-power committee led by the DGP had recommended the immediate dismissal of 59 policemen. All of them still remain cosy in their positions.
Subservient to politicians, not duty
If these criminal policemen still strut around, despite the evidence against them, it is because they know how to please their political masters. A top police officer told Onmanorama that if transfers are decided by the local committee office of the ruling political party why would they respect their higher-ups. They only need to keep their political bosses happy. Even confidential reports are junked to favour policemen willing to work as fund mobilisers and henchmen of local political bigwigs.
Take for instance, B Harikumar, the suspended DySP who is now on the run after pushing a man to death. There was a special branch report that warned against posting Harikumar in law and order. The former UDF government ignored this and posted him as CI in Aluva. Under the LDF dispensation, though he was accused in a human trafficking case, Harikumar was given promotion and posted as DySP in Neyyattinkara.
Moral code of conduct
There are two things, a sort of unwritten moral code of conduct that all policemen are advised during training. One, try not to visit a temple or a church or a mosque. Policemen should always be beyond religion, they are told. Two, don't strike friendships with powerful and moneyed men within their area of jurisdiction. If at all they want to visit their homes or attend a function they have been invited to by these people, go in uniform.
DySP Harikumar had violated the second code. He was in the house of a jeweller whose partner had earlier died in mysterious circumstances and he was not in uniform.
