HC orders medical examination of alleged police torture victim

The daughter of a woman hotel worker has moved the Madras High Court seeking action against seven police personnel who allegedly subjected her mother to third degree torture after her recent arrest in a murder case in Coimbatore district.
The petitioner also wanted a judicial inquiry into the "custodial rape" and "violence" committed on her mother and videographing of medical examination and medical treatment of her mother now under judicial custody since her arrest on August 14.
Passing orders on the petition, Justice V Ramasubramanian said since serious allegations had been made in the affidavit to the effect that the petitioner's mother was physically tortured, assaulted and subjected to worst form of treatment by police who even inserted lathi into her private parts, there will be an interim direction for medical examination.

He asked the Coimbatore District Judge to arrange for medical examination of the woman in a government hospital and file a report in the high court by September 3.
If she required medical treatment for injuries, if any, suffered in custody, the district judge should make arrangements for her treatment in a fairly reasonable and good hospital, Justice Ramasubramanian said.
The petitioner, living in Madurai District with her husband and sick father, submitted that her mother, employed in a hotel in Udumalpet and earning Rs 200 a day, was arrested in connection with the August 10 murder of her houseowner Leelavathy.

On August 14, police informed her over telephone that her mother was being arrested in connection with the murder.

It was when she met her mother at the Central Prison in Coimbatore later that she came to know that she had been put through "horrible third degree harassment" in custody.
Quoting her mother, the petitioner said police arrested her since they could not track down the real killers and subjected her to torture. At the height of such "unbearable torture, the police obtained confession from my mother."
"When my mother tearfully narrated the torture meted out to her in the police station, it sent chills down my spine. I started trembling and shivering," the daughter said in her affidavit in the high court.

According to her, her mother was tortured by seven male police officials. "The police personnel injected needle into her fingers, nails, hand and in the arms. They beat her mercilessly and hanged her upside down in the police station after removing all her clothes except her skirt.
"My mother told me with great hesitation and shiver that the police drew the lathi into her private parts and tortured her, leading to continuous bleeding."
They also threatened her that unless she confessed to the crime they would make her drink liquor and take obscene photographs of her and get them published in newspapers.

According to her, prison authorities themselves refused to take her mother in without medical certificate explaining the injuries on her person.
She claimed that the magistrate who remanded her mother also took serious exception to the treatment meted out to her but stopped short of passing any order as a large number of police personnel descended on the court premises.
She said she was also approached by some policemen who first threatened her with dire consequences and later offered to 'settle' the matter by paying a huge sum of money.