KANNIYAKUMARI: A day after the death of S Sabari Varman — a prisoner in judicial custody in Nagercoil — due to alleged custodial torture, three prison staff were arrested late on Tuesday and placed under suspension. The charges under which they were booked are not clear yet.
The arrests came hours after a postmortem report revealed 19 injuries on the 35-year-old disabled victim’s body, including his elbows, forearms, knees, and legs.
Sources said the arrested jail staff allegedly assaulted the man and tied him up inside the prison on Sunday night after he made loud noises and caused a disturbance.
A senior police officer said the suspects were arrested after holding an investigation with eyewitnesses and after perusing the CCTV recordings of the Nagercoil prison.
A panel of doctors from Kanniyakumari, Tirunelveli and Thoothukudi Government Medical College Hospitals conducted the postmortem from noon to 2 pm on Tuesday after the family members of the victim on Monday demanded that the autopsy be conducted by an independent panel of experts.
Police sources identified the arrested as chief jail warden Thirumalai Nambi Suresh and jail wardens Jagen and Sivakumar of the Nagercoil district jail.
The action against the police personnel came after Kanniyakumari District Superintendent of Police R Stalin conducted an inquiry at the prison on Tuesday, and Nagercoil Judicial Magistrate R Sathyamoorthy held inquiries at the hospital for the last two days.
Victim declared dead on arrival at Kumari hosp
Sabari Varman, owner of a grocery shop, was arrested by the South Thamaraikulam police on July 9 for allegedly selling banned tobacco products at his shop at Ethancadu. Police said 15 packets of tobacco products were seized from the shop. He was later remanded to judicial custody by a Nagercoil court and lodged in the district prison.
According to the doctors at the Kanniyakumari GMCH, Varman was brought to the hospital from the prison around 6.05 am on Monday and was declared dead on arrival. Immediately, his relatives staged a protest near the hospital, alleging death due to police torture. They also demanded that a postmortem be conducted by doctors from other government medical colleges.
They also refused to accept his body till they received the postmortem report and briefly blocked the road near the hospital on Tuesday demanding a government job for the wife of the deceased.
LoP Udhayanidhi Stalin on Tuesday demanded a fair probe into the death and sought an explanation from the government.
In a statement on X, he alleged discriminatory treatment by the police, claiming that while Sabari Varman was remanded to judicial custody after gutka was allegedly seized from his shop, a TVK functionary, Arun, arrested in a similar case, was released on station bail the very same day.
Reacting to the death, the CPI state executive committee and NTK leader Seeman demanded registration of a murder case against the accused and ` 25 lakh compensation for the victim’s family.
