New Delhi, August 03, 2021 (PPI-OT):A 45-year-old Dalit man named Bahraichi, who had been in police custody since July 25, died at the Bakhira police station in Gorakhpur district of Uttar Pradesh. Bahraichi and his three sons had been accused of abducting the daughter of a village local, Mahendra, who had lodged a complaint against them.
The deceased was a resident of Shiv Bakhri in Sant Kabir Nagar’s Baghauli block. Narrating the incident, his brother Vinod told South Asian Wire that “the former village head, Ramakant Yadav, called me up at 10 pm and told me that my brother, Bahraichi, had slipped and got injured while going to the washroom at Bakhira police station. We were asked to reach the hospital where he had been admitted.
“I went there along with my nephew, Anurag. On the way, the police stopped us at Kareli and informed us that Bahraichi fell from the stairs while going to the washroom. When we reached the hospital, my brother’s corpse was lying there. His whole body was soaked in blood. His mouth was stuffed with cotton. No policemen were around – the hospital administration informed us that they had left the body there.”
Sant Kabir Nagar’s superintendent of police has suspended Manoj Kumar, the station house officer of Bakhira police station. In the FIR registered by the Sant Kabir Nagar police, the SHO, Shiv Bakhri residents Mahendra, Ravinder, Gaurav, Vivek, Suraj and Dheeraj and one unidentified person have been booked under Sections 365 (kidnapping), 302 (murder) and 201 (evidence tampering) of the Indian Penal Code. The FIR does not specifically name Manoj Kumar Singh, but only refers to him as the SHO Bakhira.
Bahraichi worked as a farmer to earn a living. He owned five mandis of land (20 mandis = one bigha). He also used to lease land from big farmers in the village. Bahraichi lived with his parents, wife Durgavati, two sons Sanjay (25) and Kundan (20), and Sanjay’s wife Rani. One of his sons, Ashok (22), works as a painter in Chennai, while his daughter, Manju, is married and lives elsewhere. Kundan has recently passed his intermediate exams.
Sanjay says that their landlord, Mahendra, filed a complaint on July 20 that his daughter had eloped, and accused Bahraichi, Sanjay, Ashok and Kundan of abducting her. “We came to know of the complaint on the afternoon of July 21 when two cops from the Bakhira police station visited the house while my brother, Kundan, and I were away. At home, our 70-year-old grandfather Gaya Prasad, grandmother Murati Devi, mother Durgavati and my wife Rani were present. Both the policemen used obscene language and told my family to send my father and me to the police station by evening.”
“Ever since the complaint was filed,” Sanjay recalls, “Mahendra’s family had been constantly harassing and threatening us, blaming us for his daughter’s elopement. On July 25, when my father had gone to Sahjanwa to buy medicine, 15-16 members of Mahendra’s family, including women, attacked our house and dragged my mother outside, thrashing her badly. My six-year-old niece, Sugan, was also beaten up. Both of them were then abducted by the attackers.”
According to Sanjay, Mahendra’s family held his mother and niece hostage for several hours, after which they brought his mother outside, tied her to a tree and thrashed her again with rods and lathis. “When my father was apprised of the attack, he called up 112 to inform the police. But upon reaching the scene, the police arrested my mother instead. My father reached Bakhira police station from Sahjanwa at around 12 pm and asked the cops to record his statement regarding the attack on his family, but the police arrested him too. In the evening, they let my mother go, but my father was detained even though there was no case against him.”
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