Kolkata Police 'close' its officials following trader's unnatural death during interrogation

According to reports, three officers of north Kolkata's Sinthee Police Station, two Sub-Inspects (SI)- Arindam Das and Soumendranath Das, and sergeant Chinmoy Mahanta, have been 'closed' from all duties and moved to Divisional Reserve Office (DRO) pending a departmental probe, which has already been initiated by city police's homicide department.

Earlier on Monday, police had detained a 54-year-old iron scrap dealer from Paikpara area, Rajkumar Shaw, in connection with a theft case and during interrogation at Sinthee Police Station, the man suddenly fell sick.

He was rushed to R.G. Kar hospital where the trader was declared brought dead.

Alleging that he was tortured and killed by investigators in the police station, family members of the businessman lodged a complaint against three policemen with the Sinthee PS and also filed a PIL before the Calcutta High Court seeking Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) probe into the matter.

Sources in the city police said that an FIR had been registered at Sinthee PS against the three accused police personnel, who have already been sent off-duty, under IPC sections 166 (public servant disobeying law, with intent to cause injury to any person), 166A (public servant disobeying direction under law), 330 (voluntarily causing hurt to extort confession, or to compel restoration of property), 342 (wrongful confinement), 348 (wrongful confinement to extort confession, or compel restoration of property), 304 (culpable homicide not amounting to murder) and 34 (acts done by several persons in furtherance of Common intention).

Meanwhile, while hearing the matter at the Calcutta High Court on Tuesday, a division bench of Chief Justice TBN Radhakrishnan and Justice Arijit Banerjee directed the state government to submit an Action Taken Report (ATR) and post-mortem report relating to the case before the court on Feb 25.

The court also directed the police to videograph the entire post-mortem process which must be conducted as per National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) guidelines.

A senior official of Kolkata Police said that the departmental inquiry was underway as per NHRC guidelines and the post-mortem was done following the NHRC norms and it was videographed.

On Monday night, tension erupted outside Sinthee PS following the unnatural custodial death of the iron scrap trader and the situation turned violent when locals tried to vandalize the police station, and supporters of TMC and BJP engaged in a clash with each other outside Sinthee PS over the issue.
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