CALCUTTA: On May 2, fifty year old Mtihar Gazi was arrested soon after midnight at Khoronpur village in connection with a dacoity case, On May 13 Gazi was dead in police custody at the Hasnabad police station.
The incident could have died down after creating minor ripples, but Gazi was a CPI activist. And the CPI, though a constituent of the ruling Left Front took to the Streets to protest against the police “brutality.” Gazi they said, was an innocent man tortured to death.
The CPI(M) caught in a sticky mess, stuck to its guns. The Chief Minister, Jyoti Basu told the legislative assembly that Gazi was a proclaimed offender. With Gazi beyond arguing his case, the truth remained interred.
As Gazi was a CPI worker, for some time the party kicked up a Tow over deaths in police custody. Most of such deaths go ignored for a small press report. But, disturbingly deaths in police custody have been increasing. Law and order in West Bengal, the Left Front says is strictly maintained. No mention, however is made of lock up deaths.
Gazi was the sixty eight person to die in police custody since the Left Front came to power in 1977 according to the People’s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL) reoords. On an average that works out to five or six such deaths every year. But the deaths have not been evenly spread out.
In the first year of Left Front rule there were only two deaths in lock ups both in Calcutta. In 1988. 16 lock up deaths were reported which indicated a steep rise. This year there have two cases in 1980. There was one death, in 1981, one in 1982, eight in 1983, eight in 1984, eight in 1985 nine and in 1987 six.
Twenty-seven of the deaths occurred in city police custody. Nine alone at Lalbazar, the city police headquarters: Of them the most (and only) notorious cases was that of Mohammed Idris arrested in connection with the brutal murder of the Deputy Commissioner, Vinod Mehta.
Among the districts, Howrah has reported 10 custody deaths in 12 years and in 1988, the peak of the Gorkha National Liberation Front (GNLF) movement in Darjeeling hill division three cases of deaths in police custody were reported. Nothing more has been heard about them and that applies to almost all the cases.
To tum to some cases of lock up deaths in west Bengal as recorded by PUCL, a leading example is that of a 50 year old private tutor arrested in connection with the alleged disappearance of his 13 year old female ward. Within a few hours of his arrest and confinement in Shyampukur police station, he was taken in an extremely critical condition to hospital where he died immediately after admission. The victim was widely known and respected in the locality. A sizable crowd cutting across party affiliations gheraod the police station and the siege was withdrawn on promise of an inquiry.
The irony of the fifty year old tutors death that the girl concerned was reported to have reappeared on her own the next day.
Article extracted from this publication >> September 8, 1989
