INDIA: Nine months into a case of custodial death, witness statements have still not been taken

Dear friends, 

The Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) has received information about unnecessary delays in the investigation of a man’s death in custody, following his arrest for a fabricated charge. It has been reported that police officers murdered the shop owner in February last year, however the investigating agency has not even recorded the statements of witnesses yet. Though the suspect police officers were suspended from duty, they have reportedly been reassigned to active police work. At the time of his death the victim had been trying to expose corruption between the police and the forest department in the tourist town of Kalvary Mount. 

CASE DETAILS: 

According to information received from from Nervazhi, a human rights organisation based in Kerala, police arrested Rajappan on 20 February 2008 under the pretext of a complaint having been filed against him. He had reportedly had a scuffle with Jaymon, a security guard working for the state forest department, which Jaymon reported to the local police. 

Rajappan was a volunteer in the Forest Protection Force and a member of its audit committee, and believed that he had uncovered evidence of corruption linked to Jaymon. He had filed complaints against him and his associates suggesting that they had been charging tourists exorbitant fees and keeping the profits. There are also reports locally that Jaymon had shared some of these profits with local police officers. 

At the time of his arrest, the police accused Rajappan of selling illegal liquor to tourists in his shop, which is in Kalvary Mount, a popular tourist destination in the Idukki district. Rajappan denied the allegation but was punched in the face, kicked in the stomach and forced into a hired vehicle (vehicle number: KL-5-E-1717). According to witnesses, which include Maniyamma, Rajappan’s wife and Mr. K. Upendranath, a local resident, the officers included Assistant Sub-Inspector of Police, Mr. M.K. Raveendran, and were accompanied by two forest department officers and a volunteer from the Forest Protection Force. Rajappan was seen being further assaulted inside the vehicle. The police then took him to Kattapana Police Station. Later that morning Rajappan’s neighbour, Mr. Thomas Muthuplakkal, informed Maniyamma that her husband had been admitted to the Kattapana Mission Hospital, where she found him on an artificial respirator. At about 7pm that evening he was transferred to the Intensive Care Unit at Kottayam Medical College, where he died on 24 February at about 9am. 

The autopsy conducted the next day revealed 17 injuries, leading the victim’s family to accuse the police and forest department staff of his murder, as a response to his objection of their exploitation of tourists. The police and the forest department claimed that Rajappan jumped out of the vehicle on their way to the police station in a suicide bid. 

Though the Crime Investigation Division (CID) of the state police started an investigation into the case and police officers were initially placed on suspension, within months they had been returned to active duty. None of the witnesses have yet been questioned by the CID, and Maniyamma has not been informed about the progress of the case, nor have investigators recorded her statement. More than nine months after the murder of her husband, Maniyamma still does not know the circumstances of his death, the identity of his killers, or what action the state government has taken to find them. 

SUGGESTED ACTION: 

Please write to the authorities named below seeking an intervention in the case. 

The AHRC is also writing to the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture seeking an intervention in the case.

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