Lockdown deaths stir outrage over police brutality

NEW DELHI — For two and a half minutes, a popular Indian radio DJ described in graphic detail what she said was the torture and killing of a father and son in police custody.

The father was arrested for flouting coronavirus lockdown rules by keeping his mobile phone shop in southern India open past curfew, Suchitra Ramadurai alleged in a video posted to her Instagram. The man’s son went to check on him at the police station and both were beaten so badly they were still bleeding when they appeared before a judge the next day. Three days later, on June 23, they were both dead.

“Please share this story,” Ramadurai told her followers. “Let’s fight the system.”

The video, which was viewed 20 million times before police ordered Ramadurai to take it down, sparked an extraordinary groundswell of public outrage at the deaths with local opposition politicians marching in the streets and debates on police brutality.

Even more rare, 10 police officers were arrested in a federal investigation and charged with murder.

The case comes as global attention is focused on police abuse following the death of George Floyd in custody in Minneapolis. It has renewed calls in India for reform of what human rights advocates have described as a culture of abuse and impunity within the country’s police system.

The response to the deaths of the father and son, if not unprecedented, was far from the norm in India, where police “routinely use torture and flout arrest procedures with little or no accountability,” said Jayshree Bajoria, author of “Bound by Brotherhood,” a 2016 report on custodial deaths in India.

According to the New Delhibased National Campaign Against Torture, 125 people died in police custody due to torture or other abuses in 2019.

The country’s National Human Rights Commission said in its 2017 annual report that violence in custody was so rampant “that it has become almost routine,” adding that many custodial deaths were reported after a considerable delay or not reported at all.

Activists are calling for India to ratify the United Nations Convention Against Torture and incorporate its provisions into the country’s domestic laws. India is among very few countries that have not ratified the convention.