Palghar : Around 3,000 odd tribals from Jawhar Taluka in Palghar district had marched towards Jawhar police station on Sunday and staged agitation demanding strict and prompt action against police officials who, according to them, had driven a tribal to commit suicide.
Villagers alleged that the police had tortured and pressurised the victim, Navsu Bembat Khutade (60), to admit that he had murdered an unknown person a month ago and burned his body in the fields.
It’s been more than a month since a murder had taken place in the fields of Vinval, Jawhar, wherein a badly burnt body of an unknown person was found. Cops, till now, have been unsuccessful in cracking this case. The villagers alleged that the police investigating this case had interrogated Vinval resident Navsu Khutade by beating him in front of his family. He was tortured to the extent that he couldn’t bear this humiliation and took this extreme step of committing suicide by hanging self to a tree. Only after seven days, on Sunday, was his body noticed by people. They alleged that Navsu had committed suicide as he couldn’t accept this shame to him and his family.
Around 3,000 furious tribals stormed the Jawhar police station demanding prompt action against the police officials who had tortured Khutade. Police also tried to remove the body from the tree early morning on Monday but cops had to flee as alert villagers pelted stones on them. Later, after much convincing police were successful in removing the body from the tree and sent it to J.J Hospital for post-mortem.
DySP Pradeep Jadhav said, “Investigations are underway in this case and we cannot comment on it any further. We can only confirm that we are looking into the allegations of villagers.”
Vishnu Savara, Minister for Tribal Development and Social Justice, wasn’t available for comments on this issue inspite of repeated attempts.
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Another attack on another tribal…
In another incident a tribal Ganesh Umberkhada, who is also a social activist, was mercilessly beaten up by the Valiv police when he went to help other tribals register an offence. Rekha Nandkar, a Gram Panchayat member of Majiwada, Vasai (East), was allegedly abused and ink was also thrown on her. She wanted to report this incident to the police and wanted the culprits to be punished and hence had approached Valiv police station along with Umberkhada. This is when Umberkhada was locked up in a room and tortured by the cops and threatened from filing a complaint. Protesting this atrocity around 1,200 people thronged Valiv police station and staged a protest demanding prompt action against Valiv police officials involved in this illegal detention and torture of a complainant.
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Vishal Rajemahadik
