Clarion India
NEW DELHI – In the last 10 days, four Muslim men died in judicial custody at the Baruipur Central Correctional Home, South 24 Parganas district, West Bengal.
According to The Wire, the victims are Abdul Rajjak, Jiyaul Laskar, Akbar Khan and Saidul Munsi.
All the four men had been held 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 suspected that the men were grievously tortured to death.
The police 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”.
According to the report, 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.
The father of two girls, 34-year-old Abdul Rajjak ran a poultry business for which he visited Bihar frequently. Rajjak’s wife Suhana Bibi told The Wire, “On July 24, four men in civil dress came to my house and asked for Rajjak. He was sent to jail the next day. I met him on July 27 and he was totally normal. But at around 1 PM on July 29, a policeman came to our home and told us that Rajjak was in a critical condition and we needed to visit the hospital.”
According to advocate Asfak Ahmed, Akbar Khan, an accused in another suspected dacoity case, died on August 2 while in judicial custody. The lawyer said that Akbar Khan’s body had marks of torture and the family is yet to recieve the postmortem report.
According to his family, 33-year-old Saidul Munsi was picked up from his home on July 25 by the Maheshtala police. Munsi’s family claims that he was assaulted by the police on the day of his arrest. A day later, he was sent to the Baruipur jail.