Image Courtesy:thewire.in
A 42-year-old man in Bulandshahr was allegedly thrown off the roof of his house by the police when they made a visit to his house after midnight with respect to a case of illegal slaughter. Mohammad Aqeel Qureshi’s eight-year old daughter, Summaiya states that she was on the terrace when the incident took place, and claims that the police asked her father for money and when he refused, they started beating him up with pistol butts, and then held him by his legs and flung him off the terrace.
Qureshi who had a meat shop in Khurja Nagar area has a family that includes his wife, 5 children and his mother-in-law and he earned a meagre Rs. 500 a day on an average, reports The Wire. The police claim that Qureshi had been involved in cases of illegal slaughter as well as other offences and he was trying to escape from them when he fell off the terrace. The family claims that the police often took money from Qureshi. “My husband would often give money to the police out of fear when they demanded it, but he never gave me the details of why this was happening,” Shahana told The Wire.
Qureshi’s mother-in-law said that if he had done anything wrong, the police should have filed a case against him and pursued the investigation with evidence in court instead of coming to their house after midnight.
The police allege that the family is claiming police atrocity only after Qureshi’s death. However, the family says they wrote to the SDM on May 27, the day he died, alleging that he was thrown off the terrace by policemen Sunil, Gaurav, Dilendra, Fareed and others after they injured him with pistol butts. The police further claim that the family admitted him to the hospital under a false name, however, documents perused by The Wire show that they used his first Aqeel in all documents.
The Bulandshahr police state that it has initiated a probe into the matter through SP (Rural) Harendra Kumar who said in a press statement, “The local police went to his house on May 23 to detain him, but returned empty handed after his wife told them that he wasn’t there”. To this statement, Shahana questioned that if this is true, why would her husband jump from the terrace to escape when the police had already left, he could have just escaped through the door.
Meanwhile, People’s Union for Civil Liberties has also written a letter to the National Human Rights Commission complaining of police brutality in this case.
For Shahana, the dilemma is the sustenance of her 5 children, as her husband was the sole breadwinner of the family.
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