THOOTHUKUDI: The Tamil Nadu Human Rights Commission (SHRC) on Wednesday awarded a compensation of Rs 2 lakh to a research scholar, who was arrested by police, for sloganeering against the then BJP State president Dr Tamilisai Soundararajan at Thoothukudi airport in 2018.
The SHRC has ordered that the compensation be recovered from the seven policemen, including then Pudhukottai police inspector R Thirumalai, sub-inspector AK Latha, ADSP V Ponramu, R Prakash, All Women Police Station inspector J Annathai (since retired), inspector G Baskaran and SI S Nambirajan, against whom Dr AA Samy lodged a complaint of causing mental torture to his daughter S Lois Sofia in the pretext of conducting an interrogation.
Speaking to TNIE, Lois Sofia said, "In a democracy, it is not the job of the police to act as henchmen for politicians or muffle dissenting political thought and speech. I hope this order will go a small way towards discouraging police officers from bowing to political pressure and abandoning the process of law.”
Lois Sofia, a research scholar in mathematics at a Canada university, was flying to Thoothukudi from Chennai on September 3, 2018.
While deboarding the flight at Thoothukudi, she raised slogans – "down, down fascist BJP government" – against Dr Soundararaj, who travelling on the same flight. Subsequently, the Pudhukottai police detained her for an inquiry along with her father, and a case was registered against her.
According to Samy, Thirumalai arrested his daughter Sofia in “mechanical manner” and questioned her for six hours at the police station causing mental torture.
The SHRC member D Jayachandran, in the order, said the arrest of an eminent human rights activist Lois Sofia is not at all essential.
Even though the sections invoked against the student are bailable in nature, the inspector cannot arrest her in a mechanical manner, he said.
He also observed that Thirumalai and AK Latha fabricated the FIR by inserting section 505(1)(B) of IPC in ink by hand after preparing the FIR, and had removed the original FIR from the records. Moreover, the police did not follow the procedures laid down by the apex court while questioning and remanding the victim to judicial custody.
Underlining the developments that had “affected the liberty and freedom of the victim”, the commission held that all seven police officers had violated the human rights of the victim.
Stating that monetary or pecuniary compensation is perhaps the only suitable remedy for redressal of the established infringement of the fundamental right of a citizen by the public servants, the commission said the victim is entitled to receive compensation of Rs 2 lakh from the police respondents of the case, and said departmental actions must be initiated against them as per the rules.
The Tamil Nadu government shall recover the compensation of Rs 2 lakh from the respondents such that Rs 50,000 is paid by Thirumalai and Rs 25,000 from each of the six others. The amount should be paid to the victim within a month, the order said.
The commission also recommended the State government give suitable instruction to the Director General of Police not to mechanically arrest the accused if the offence is punishable with imprisonment for a term, with or without fine.