Boy called for questioning at Kasganj police station in Kasganj district of Uttar Pradesh in a kidnapping case died in custody. According to police, Altaf aged 22 hanged himself using a string from his jacket hood in the washroom of the police lock-up.
“One Altaf was called for questioning in Kasganj police station in a case related to IPC kidnapping and kidnapping, abducting or inducing a woman to compel her marriage on Tuesday morning,” narrating the sequence of events, Superintendent of Police, Kasganj, Rohan Pramod Botre said on Wednesday.
During interrogation, he requested the policemen to go to the washroom and was allowed to use the washroom inside the lock-up. “He was wearing a black colour jacket. He tried to strangulate himself with a string on the hood that he tied to the tap of the toilet. When he did not return for some time, the policemen went inside and found him unconscious. He was rushed to the community health centre, Ashok Nagar in Kasganj, where he died,” the SP added.
Postmortem of the victim is being conducted, he said, adding that five policemen have been suspended for negligence in the wake of the incident.
“The lax policemen will be punished. We have suspended five policemen in this connection,” he said.
However, Altaf’s family members alleged that he was killed by police inside the lock-up. The opposition Samajwadi Party also attacked the Yogi Adityanath government for ‘yet another custodial death’ and took to Twitter to attack the Yogi Adityanath government, calling the incident another misdeed of UP”s “thoko (trigger-happy) police”.
भाजपा सरकार में कस्टोडियल डेथ में No.1 उत्तर प्रदेश!
— Samajwadi Party (@samajwadiparty) November 10, 2021
कासगंज में पुलिस हिरासत में मारे गए युवक अल्ताफ के शोक संतप्त परिजनों के प्रति संवेदना।
सपा पीड़ित परिवार को ₹5 लाख की आर्थिक सहायता प्रदान करेगी।
दोषी पुलिसकर्मियों के खिलाफ हो कार्रवाई, पीड़ित परिवार को मिले न्याय।
“In UP, under the patronage of the chief minister, criminal and police are committing an encounter of law and order. The guilty policemen should face a murder case and must be punished,” the party said in a tweet in Hindi.
The incident comes close on the heels of a sanitation worker, who was accused of stealing Rs 25 lakh from Jagdishpura police station in Agra, dying in police custody after his health deteriorated during interrogation.