AGRA: A boy from Etah, 15, who was arrested on drug possession charges, produced in court as an adult and sent to the district jail instead of a juvenile detention centre for three months killed himself at home on Tuesday. Four policemen have been booked for abetment of suicide.
“On March 9 (this year), my son had stepped out to buy pizza. He was arrested,” said his father, a farmer. Police said they found 500g diazepam on him. “He was kept in lockup and beaten up for four days. Cops demanded Rs 2 lakh to release him.”
The boy was eventually produced in court, as an adult, and sent to jail under the Narcotics Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act on March 12. Had he been tried at a juvenile court, he could have got bail right then.
He spent three months in jail while his parents tried to get him out. On July 25, he finally got out. “Police had not been able to file a chargesheet,” the boy’s counsel Yaduveer Singh Chauhan said.
After he came home, things were different. “He had changed. He was always a cheerful teenager. He went into depression,” his father said. The Class XII commerce student had been a diligent student, scoring the first division in his Class X boards, and wanted to get an MBA. He would have turned 16 in November. “He lost interest in everything. Those three months had broken him. He killed himself in his room on Tuesday afternoon … I have no trust in Etah police officials. I hope CM Yogi Adityanath intervenes to get me justice.”
The father filed a complaint against four cops — sub-inspectors Mohit Rana and Shiv Kumar, head constable Upendra Kumar and constable Ravish Kumar. “On the basis of the complaint, an FIR has been registered against the four policemen under Section 306 (abetment of suicide) of the IPC. Earlier this year, an FIR was registered against the boy under the NDPS Act and he was sent to jail on court orders. The entire matter is being investigated,” Etah SSP Udai Shanker Singh said.
Sub-inspector Mohit Rana was at the centre of another probe last month when it was alleged that he had arrested a father and son who had filed a dowry complaint. The father and son had said that they were dragged out of their shops, and beaten up in public and at the police station before being arrested.
