The Constitution’s replica displayed in a glass box outside Parbhani railway station was damaged on December 10. Eyewitnesses alleged that Sopan Pawar, a 45-year-old Maratha, was responsible. Within minutes of the incident, almost 300 persons, mostly from Vanchit Bahujan Aaghadi (VBA), a political party founded by Prakash Ambedkar, gathered at Parbhani station in protest. They stopped the Nandigram Express for half an hour. Police managed to disperse them and booked 80 people under section 191 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita. But the incident did not stop here.
The next day, VBA and other Ambedkarite organisations announced a “Parbhani bandh” to protest the vandalism. The bandh was peaceful until the afternoon of December 11. But later, vehicles were torched, there were incidents of stone pelting and the chairs at the District Collector’s office were broken by the angry protesters.
The Parbhani police imposed an internet shutdown on the day. They filed 10 first information reports (FIRs) and arrested 50 persons. All 50 were taken into police custody. Somnath Suryavanshi, 35, a law aspirant, was one of them. On December 15, Suryavanshi complained of chest pain while in judicial custody. The same evening he died at the Parbhani district jail. His postmortem revealed that his death was a result of “internal and external injuries which shocked him”.
Suryavanshi’s death supported accusations made by Dalit organisations about police brutality. Rahul Pradhan, president of Yuva Panther, an aggressive youth organisation, posted multiple videos on X. In these videos, police were seen carrying out a “combing operation” to take protesters into custody. Pradhan said, “Parbhani police mishandled the situation. They arrested people with complete prejudice. All the accused in judicial custody have injuries. They were transferred from police custody to judicial custody without medical checkups. The protest is being used to muzzle the Dalit voice of Parbhani.”
Death in police custody
Although the police denied these charges, Suryavanshi’s mother Vijaya Suryavanshi made a shocking claim. She told a local newspaper, “First they [the police] beat my son, which is why he died. Later they told me that he died from a heart attack. But the postmortem report is there. They killed my son. I want the concerned police personnel to be arrested for this crime.”
This story was originally published in frontline.thehindu.com. Read the full story here.