MANGALURU: District Minister U T Khader on Wednesday directed City Police Commissioner T R Suresh to investigate the alleged police harassment to a person in connection with a Facebook post.
Ashraf M Salethur, a resident of Bantwal was arrested on August 21 for his response to a Facebook post on Kerala floods. According to Salethur, he only tried to draw scientific temper to the post of a man, which said: ‘The court permission to let menstruating women in Shabarimala caused floods in Kerala’. Salethur in reponse wrote: ‘What caused floods in Lord’s Parashuram’s creation Mangaluru?’
Mangaluru North police registered a suo-motu case against him under Section 153, 505, 507. In his letter to Minister Khader on Tuesday, Salethur said that the CCB police called him to the station and only to mentally harass him. He said he was locked up in the station and handed over to the Mangaluru North police station, where he was stripped naked and put in a lock-up for 24 hours.
“They presented me before the judge the next day, but coerced me to tell the judge that I was picked up on the same day morning (August 22) and not the previous day,” he told TNIE. He was then sentenced to judicial custody for six days.
He accused the jailers of robbing more than Rs 3,000 worth of his belongings including a purse and a memory card, upon his release.