By Alishan Jafri / The Wire
New Delhi: In the last 10 days, four men – Abdul Rajjak, Jiyaul Laskar, Akbar Khan and Saidul Munsi – died in judicial custody at the Baruipur Central Correctional Home, South 24 Parganas district, West Bengal.
All the four men had been picked up by the West Bengal police in separate cases in the last week of July. The families of the four deceased men have alleged foul play and raised doubts about the causes of their deaths, openly stating their suspicions that the men were grievously tortured to death.
Meanwhile, with no postmortem reports available as yet, police sources have denied these charges, calling the deaths of these four men one after the other while they were all jailed in the same facility “a coincidence”.
Jiyaul Laskar
On July 25, Jiyaul Laskar, who lived in Subash Pally and worked as an auto-rickshaw driver in nearby Baruipur, did not return home from work. Worried about the whereabouts of the 35 year old, his family had set out to look for him the next morning when they learned that he had been arrested for conspiring to commit a dacoity. Laskar’s family alleged that he was grievously assaulted inside the Baruipur police station on the day of his arrest and also the following day. The day after that, he was taken to the court, from where he was sent to jail.
“Three or four days before his death, he met my sister-in-law,” said Sabera Bibi, Jiyaul Laskar’s older sister. “He was crying during the short meeting and said that he was being assaulted. If the police say that my brother did drugs, I will accept it. But does that mean they should hit him like that? His body has bruises and injuries.”
While Jiyaul’s family claim he died on August 1, he was officially declared dead on August 2.
According to advocate Tonoy Bhattacharya who represented Sabera Bibi in the court, two other men – Surojit Haldar and Rabiul Haldar – who had been arrested along with Laskar told them that Laskar had died because of torture. The two men pleaded for bail a few days later, citing assault by the police and the death of Laskar in judicial custody. They were granted interim bail by the additional chief judicial magistrate (ACJM) who noted that their detention in the Baruipur jail where the deceased had also been housed would not be proper for a fair enquiry.
This story was originally published in thewire.in . Read the full story here