3 year old custodial death probe; No logical end yet

Mangaluru: The government has failed to hand over the ‘custodial death’ of the then PUCL district president David D’Souza to Criminal Investigation Department (CID) for conclusive enquiry, accused P B D’Sa , national Vice President  of the People’s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL) on Sept 21^st.

Incident synopsis

On the evening of July 2, 2015, D’Souza gone along with Stany Fernades to Mangaluru Rural police station with regards to a family dispute case.

“The station officer had allegedly dragged D’Souza to a room and beaten him up. After 10 minutes, an unconscious D’Souza was moved to a hospital where he was declared brought dead,” said Mr D’Sa.

Absolutely no action taken

Soon after the activist’s death, PUCL had written to Mangaluru commissioner of police demanding stringent action against police involved in the custodial death. However, the police had misled them into believing that the case had been handed over to CID for an in-depth investigation, observed Mr D’Sa.

“Former High Court Judge Justice M F Saldanha’s letter to National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), Karnataka State Human Rights Commission (KSHRC), highlighting the murder in police custody, was ignored,’’ rued D’Sa.

D’Sa pointed out the there was no enquiry by a judicial magistrate, and recollected how DySP Ganapathy’s suicide case was quickly referred to CID in order to exonerate then minister George of all charges.

Applications seeking a copy of the post-mortem report on D’Souza’s death under RTI were rejected. Then home minister Ramalinga Reddy, on receiving a memorandum, had promised to punish the guilty, he said.

“As government and police had been indifferent to D’Souza’s custodial death case, we intend to organise a string of protests until the victim’s family secures justice,” assured Hanif Shah, patron member of PUCL.