Mangalore, February 23: Officials of the Kadaba Police Station in Puttur taluk allegedly beat up a minor on February 6 evening after taking him to the station for “questioning” with regard to theft of rubber sheets. He has since filed a complaint with the Karnataka State Human Rights Commission.
Mohammed Ashraf was playing cricket with his friends on the morning of February 6, a Sunday, when the police reportedly came to the grounds in Golthady, and took him to Kadaba Police Station for questioning.
Ashraf was suspected to have stolen rubber sheets from a rubber plantation where he had been working for two weeks before the incident. At the police station, they questioned him from around 10.30 a.m. to around 3.30 p.m. Four officials, including the sub-inspector, then took him to a cell and started beating him up, Ashraf said.
“Three of the officials held my legs down and the sub-inspector beat me on the soles of my feet with a lathi,” he said in the complaint and added that he repeatedly told them that he did not steal rubber sheets.
“They poured petrol on my private parts and threatened to set me on fire. I confessed to a crime I did not commit to save my life,” Ashraf said in the complaint. The next morning, the police took him to the shop where he said he had sold the sheets, Ashraf said. The complaint states that the police made Ashraf, his mother, and his aunt sign blank sheets of paper. They let him go home around 6.30 p.m. on Monday.
Ashraf's elder brother Illyas said that they could not take him to the hospital on Monday as Kadaba is 25 km from Puttur. There were no buses in the evening, he said.
On Tuesday morning, Ashraf was admitted to a private hospital in Puttur. Superintendent of Police A.S. Rao said the boy was not beaten up by the police. The police kept an eye on Ashraf in connection with property theft and he had been taken for questioning which lasted a few hours and handed him over to his parents the same evening.
The boy did not say anything that evening.
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