The Indian Express reported that the video shows a man seated on a chair gripping a young boy by his hair, tearing out handfuls of it, and throwing the hair into a dustbin — all while laughing. The boy, visibly terrified, pleads for the abuse to stop. The person seen committing the act has been identified as a sanitation worker employed at the station, while the video was allegedly filmed by a police constable posted there.

Police have now registered an FIR under multiple provisions of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS) — including Section 115(2) (voluntarily causing hurt), Section 198 (willful disobedience of law with intent to cause injury), and Section 54 (abetment while present). The case also invokes Section 75 of the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, which criminalises cruelty towards a child, according to The Indian Express.

The incident and the complaint

According to the FIR, the incident occurred last month after the boy — a minor — was detained in an assault case. The complaint, filed by his grandmother, states that he had been picked up by the police following a neighbourhood altercation that left one person injured in an alleged knife attack. The police then detained the boy and subsequently sent him to a juvenile remand home, where he remained for about 16–17 days before being released, as per Indian Express.

Initially, the youth did not disclose the abuse he suffered in custody. His grandmother told The Indian Express that he became withdrawn and fearful after being released. It was only when the video surfaced on social media several weeks later that he revealed the truth — that during his detention, he was humiliated, beaten, and had his hair forcibly pulled out while police officers looked on and one recorded the act on his phone.

The grandmother then approached community leaders for help, and together they drafted a formal complaint. This complaint named four persons: the sanitation worker, the constable, the station’s police inspector, and an Assistant Commissioner of Police (ACP).

Community intervention and representation

Mujahid Nafees, Convener of the Minority Coordination Committee (MCC), wrote to Gujarat DGP Vikas Sahay on behalf of the family, demanding immediate disciplinary and criminal action against the officers involved. The application was formally forwarded to Rajkot Police Commissioner Brajesh Kumar Jha, reported The Indian Express.

With the assistance of local community members, the youth’s grandmother also submitted a separate written representation to the Police Commissioner. However, when the FIR was finally registered, it named only two accused — the constable and the sanitation worker — omitting the senior officers originally mentioned.

According to sources close to the family, reported The Indian Express, the police presented what they described as “convincing evidence” that both the Inspector and ACP were not present at the police station when the incident occurred. This led to their exclusion from the FIR, though activists have criticised the decision as premature and lacking transparency.

Official statements and inquiry

When contacted, Rajkot City Police Commissioner Brajesh Kumar Jha was unavailable for comment. DCP Zone-2 Rakesh Desai told The Indian Express that the FIR had been filed based on the grandmother’s complaint. “In the case of the video of a minor whose hair is being pulled out, his grandmother has given a complaint and we have filed an FIR,” Desai said. “The accused police constable has been transferred to headquarters, and the sanitation worker has been removed from his job.”

When asked about the inspector and ACP who were named in the initial complaint but not in the FIR, DCP Desai said, “Our inquiry has found that they were not involved.”

The preliminary inquiry has now been assigned to ACP (West) Radhika Bharai, who confirmed to The Indian Express that she has recorded statements from all involved and will submit her final report shortly. The criminal investigation into the FIR will be handled by a Police Sub-Inspector from another chowki under the same jurisdiction to ensure impartiality.

A second case of custodial torture against a minor

This latest incident in Rajkot comes on the heels of another horrifying case from Botad district, Gujarat, where four police constables were booked for the alleged torture and sexual assault of a 17-year-old boy in custody in August 2025. The case has attracted national attention due to the boy’s critical condition and the Supreme Court’s involvement.

According to the report of LiveLaw, the sister of the victim filed a petition under Article 32 of the Constitution before the Supreme Court, seeking an investigation by a Special Investigation Team (SIT) or the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI). As provided in the petition, the boy was picked up by police officers of Botad Town on August 19, 2025, from a local fair on suspicion of theft. He was illegally detained for over nine days — from August 19 to August 28 — during which he was brutally assaulted and sexually abused by four to six officers.

The plea alleged multiple violations of procedural law:

• The minor was not produced before a Juvenile Justice Board or magistrate within 24 hours,
• No medical examination was conducted,
• His grandfather was also detained and tortured, and
• Officials later attempted to coerce the family into signing false statements.

On September 1, as per Bar & Bench, police told the family that the boy was suffering from an “insect bite” and required specialised medical attention. He was transferred to Zydus Hospital, Ahmedabad, where doctors found that he had suffered severe kidney damage requiring dialysis, temporary blindness, and seizures resulting from trauma.

The petition further stated that the boy remained in the ICU, and during this time, police officials allegedly forced his signature on certain documents and compelled family members to sign papers claiming that his injuries were due to a bicycle fall. The hospital refused to share the toxicology report or medical details with the family.

Supreme Court’s directions

The matter reached the Supreme Court in early October. A bench of Justices Vikram Nath and Sandeep Mehta heard the petition on October 7, 2025. As per LiveLaw, the bench refused to entertain the case directly, directing the petitioner to first approach the Gujarat High Court for relief.

Justice Nath observed: “Our sympathy is with your case, but the proper way is to go to the High Court.” Justice Mehta added that the petitioner could return to the Supreme Court if the High Court failed to take adequate steps.

The petitioner’s lawyer, pleaded for urgent directions to preserve the CCTV footage of the police station and to constitute a medical board from AIIMS, citing fears that crucial evidence might be destroyed. The Court, however, declined to issue immediate orders, stating, “It won’t be destroyed if you go to the High Court timely.”

Civil society response and pattern of abuse

The Minority Coordination Committee (MCC), which has taken up both the Rajkot and Botad cases, has called for the immediate suspension of the accused officers, registration of additional offences under custodial violence statutes, and judicial monitoring of the investigations.

Human rights advocates and legal experts have expressed grave concern over the emerging pattern of police violence against minors, particularly Muslim youth from marginalized backgrounds. They point out that both cases involve illegal detention, denial of medical access, and attempts at cover-up, indicating a culture of impunity within the state’s policing system.

Bhatt, who represented the Botad victim’s family, told Bar & Bench that these incidents “demonstrate a systemic disregard for due process and a chilling normalisation of custodial violence against minors.”

Conclusion: The urgency of accountability

The two back-to-back incidents — in Rajkot and Botad — lay bare a disturbing continuity of abuse within Gujarat’s police system, particularly against young Muslim males. Both cases reveal a pattern of dehumanizing violence, institutional protectionism, and token disciplinary actions that stop short of real accountability.

While Rajkot police have limited their action to transferring one constable and dismissing a sanitation worker, such cosmetic measures do little to restore public faith. Rights organizations have called for:

• Independent investigations under judicial supervision,
• Immediate forensic preservation of CCTV footage and medical records,
• Prosecution of officers under sections related to custodial torture and juvenile protection, and
• Oversight by the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC)

As has been documented, these incidents are not isolated excesses — they are symptoms of a systemic crisis. Unless the Gujarat government ensures structural accountability and enforces zero tolerance for custodial brutality, these cases will fade into the familiar pattern of viral outrage followed by institutional silence.

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A horrific crime has been reported from Gujarat where a 16-year-old girl has been stabbed 32 times, and killed by a 23-year-old man, reportedly, for refusing his marriage proposal. The crime was reported from  Gujarat’s Jetalsar area. According to India Today, local Police have arrested the accused, and identified him as Jayesh Sarvaiya.

According to media reports, the teenager was attacked March 17. She, a class 12 student, was with her brother at their home in Jetalsar village of Jetpur taluka of Gujarat’s Rajkot when attacked. Police told the media that the victim was dragged out of her house, and stabbed 32 times by Jayesh Sarvaiya after she rejected his marriage proposal. The victim’s brother also suffered severe injuries as he too was stabbed multiple times when he tried to save his sister.  

Meanwhile, the BJP state president CR Patil on Monday met the family members of the victim and said “the government was committed to punish the guilty in the case” stated media reports. The state Congress working president Hardik Patel and NCP leader Reshma Patel also met the family members and demanded strict action against the culprit. The opposition has questioned the law and order situation of the state. 

Related:

Jignesh Mevani calls for gathering on March 23 to demand justice for Amrabhai Boricha

Dalit RTI activist hacked to death in Gujarat

The Question of Bahujan Women

Hathras: Man accused of sexual assault, shoots father outside village temple

Dalit teenager killed, body dumped in Aligarh field

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The “caterwaul” on Capitol Hill reflects years of determined effort by grassroots groups to end U.S. involvement in war on Yemen, fed by mounting international outrage at the last three years of war that have caused the deaths of an estimated 85,000 Yemeni children under age five.
How might we understand what it would mean in the United States for fourteen million people in our country to starve? You would have to combine the populations of New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles, and imagine these cities empty of all but the painfully and slowly dying, to get a glimpse into the suffering in Yemen, where one of every two persons faces starvation.

Antiwar activists have persistently challenged elected representatives to acknowledge and end the horrible consequences of modern warfare in Yemen where entire neighborhoods have been bombed, displacing millions of people; daily aerial attacks have directly targeted Yemen’s infrastructure, preventing delivery of food, safe water, fuel, and funds. The war crushes people through aerial bombing and on-the-ground fighting as well as an insidious economic war.

Yemenis are strangled by import restrictions and blockades, causing non-payment of government salaries, inflation, job losses, and declining or disappearing incomes. Even when food is available, ordinary Yemenis cannot afford it.

Starvation is being used as a weapon of war—by Saudi Arabia, by the United Arab Emirates, and by the superpower patrons including the United States that arm and manipulate both countries.

During the thirteen years of economic sanctions against Iraq— those years between the Gulf War and the devastating U.S.-led “Shock and Awe” war that followed—I joined U.S. and U.K. activists traveling to Iraq in public defiance of the economic sanctions.

We aimed to resist U.S.- and U.K.-driven policies that weakened the Iraqi regime’s opposition more than they weakened Saddam Hussein. Ostensibly democratic leaders were ready to achieve their aims by brutally sacrificing children under age five. The children died first by the hundreds, then by the thousands and eventually by the hundreds of thousands. Sitting in a Baghdad pediatric ward, I heard a delegation member, a young nurse from the U.K., begin to absorb the cruelty inflicted on mothers and children.

“I think I understand,” murmured Martin Thomas, “It’s a death row for infants.” Children gasped their last breaths while their parents suffered a pile-up of anguish, wave after wave. We should remain haunted by those children’s short lives.

Iraq’s children died amid an eerie and menacing silence on the part of mainstream media and most elected U.S. officials. No caterwauling was heard on Capitol Hill. But, worldwide, people began to know that children were paying the price of abysmally failed policies, and millions of people opposed the 2003 Shock and Awe war.

Still the abusive and greedy policies continue. The U.S. and its allies built up permanent warfare states to secure consistent exploitation of resources outside their own territories.

During and after the Arab Spring, numerous Yemenis resisted dangerously unfair austerity measures that the Gulf Cooperation Council and the U.S. insisted they must accept. Professor Isa Blumi, who notes that generations of Yemeni fighters have refused to acquiesce to foreign invasion and intervention, presents evidence that Saudi Arabia and the UAE now orchestrate war on Yemen to advance their own financial interests.

In the case of Saudi Arabia, Blumi states that although Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman wants to author an IPO (International Public Offering), for the Saudi state oil company, Aramco, no major investors would likely participate. Investment firms know the Saudis pay cash for their imports, including billions of dollars’ worth of weaponry, because they are depleting resources within their own territory. This, in part, explains the desperate efforts to take over Yemen’s offshore oil reserves and other strategic assets.

Recent polls indicate that most Americans don’t favor U.S. war on Yemen. Surely, our security is not enhanced if the U.S. continues to structure its foreign policy on fear, prejudice, greed, and overwhelming military force. The movements that pressured the U.S. Senate to reject current U.S. foreign policy regarding Saudi Arabia and its war on Yemen will continue raising voices. Collectively, we’ll work toward raising the lament, pressuring the media and civil society to insist that slaughtering children will never solve problems.

Kathy Kelly is a peace activist and a co-coordinator of Voices for Creative Nonviolence http://vcnv.org/ . Kathy Kelly’s email is kathy@vcnv.org

This article first appeared on the website of The Progressive magazine.
 

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