Faizan the young man who was seen lying injured on the street with a few others as policemen made them sing the national anthem in a video that went viral, breathed his last three days after the assault. His family told News18, Faizan was declared dead at the GTB Hospital on the morning of February 26.
The deeply disturbing video that may be viewed here, shows policemen raining blows on the injured youth and asking them to sing the national anthem even as they pleaded for mercy.
According to his family, Faizan and his friends had gone to a place where peaceful protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) were being held on February 23. They left when police started lobbing tear gas shells, but were accosted and assaulted a short distance away.
Faizan’s brother Nayeem told News18 that the assaulted boys were taken to GTB Hospital for treatment. “They were treated only for name’s sake. Soon they were taken to Jyoti Nagar police station where they were kept for two days,” he said. “My brother was dying in a lock-up, but the policemen wouldn’t let us see him. They abused us and threw us out of the police station.”
Nayeem says they were only called on February 25 to the police station to take Faizan back, but he was in very bad shape. The family believes that he was brutalized in police custody. “What we got from them was a battered body, bleeding through its skull, with the jaw broken. This was not Faizan,” Bablu, Faizan’s brother-in-law told News18. “I saw my brother murmur in pain the whole night. He kept repeating “Police beat me up. They beat me up”.”
Bablu added that the family took Faizan to a doctor the next morning, who referred him to GTB Hospital, were, he was declared dead. At present Faizan’s body is in the mortuary of GTB hospital pending postmortem.