TIRUVANNAMALAI: About 10 days after a youth from an SC community died in police custody in Chennai, the family of a man, from the Malai Kuravar tribal community, has alleged he was beaten to death by police for failing to pay a bribe.
Thangamani, a 48-year-old farmer from Thattaranai, was secured by the enforcement wing of the police on Tuesday allegedly for brewing illicit liquor. Denying the family’s allegations, police said he was remanded in the Tiruvannamalai sub-jail that evening but died the next day at 8.45 pm at Tiruvannamalai Government Hospital, where he was rushed after developing seizures. Chief Minister MK Stalin, responding to Opposition leader Edappadi K Palaniswami in Assembly on Friday, said action will be taken after receiving the postmortem report.
Meanwhile, the man’s family staged a roadblock at Moogilkiraipattu and refused to accept his body, demanding action against the police personnel involved. “Police demanded a bribe of `2 lakh from my father. They arrested him because he refused to pay up,” Thangamani’s son Dhinakaran told TNIE.
Custodial death: DIG refutes kin’s allegations
Dhinakaran claimed that after his father was arrested, Enforcement Wing Inspector Nirmala and three policemen visited their house at 3 am on Wednesday and threatened to keep Thangamani in jail for a year if the family refused to pay the bribe.
“They also hurled casteist slur,” he said. Refuting the allegations, Vellore Range DIG Dr Z Annie Vijaya said, “Thangamani has been booked multiple times for brewing illicit liquor since 2009 and he’s even been convicted in a few cases. He was secured during a raid and was remanded in sub-jail. He developed health complications twice on the same day and was admitted to the GH,” she said.
The family, however, said: “If the cellphone location of the police personnel is checked for that date and time it will show they were at our house. Also, the police said they confiscated 160 litres of illicit liquor. The distance from our home to the police station is 32 km. Can they produce any CCTV visuals of the liquor being confiscated and taken away?” Dhinakaran asked.
“Our lawyer called the inspector to know where he’s lodged. That is when they said Thangamani was sick and urged us to visit the GH,” Dhinakaran said. The family said Thangamani had no history of health problems. Stalin said in the House that once Thangamani, who was in the sub-jail under judicial custody, fell sick on April 27 he was taken to the hospital at around 7.40 pm.
Despite treatment, he died at 8.40 pm, the CM said, adding postmortem was conducted on Thursday night Palaniswami said police prevented the family from meeting the Collector. He asked the government to hand over the case to the CBI.