A former soldier of the Indian Army, Resham Singh, said that he was tortured by the Uttar Pradesh police, on 3 May, after the police stopped his car at a barricade in Puranpur town of Pilibhit district. The cops abused him on his Sikh identity, tied him up, tore out his turban, pulled his hair, beat him with lathis—causing grave injuries on his backside and hips—and anally penetrated him with a baton, Resham said. The police also manhandled his sisters, according to the first-information report lodged at the Puranpur Sadar police station. Despite the accusations of grave torture and brutality, the FIR accuses the cops of minor bailable offences.
The forty-year-old Resham was travelling with his mother and two sisters to Lakhimpur Kheri to attend his brother-in-law’s funeral rites when they were stopped at the barricade near Sadar police station. The sub-inspector Ram Naresh Singh asked to see their vehicle documents. While Resham was looking for them, the FIR states, Ram Naresh began abusing him for taking too long. When the army veteran asked him to be mindful of his language since his mother and sisters were present, the sub-inspector and other police present at the site started beating him. Resham’s sisters tried to intervene, but the sub-inspector pushed and slapped them too, according to the FIR.
At the time, there were several men gathered at a vote counting centre for the UP panchayat elections set up near the barricade. Many of them came running to see the commotion. Satinder Singh and Harjinder Singh were among these men and they began to take videos of the incident. “We were surprised that they behaved like that with the fauji,” Satinder told me. The police began objecting to their recording of the incident. “The police argued that we wrongly took the videos, and I countered that we have a right to record the incident,” he said. The cops snatched the mobile phones of the two men and tried to delete the videos. “They were able to delete two videos but one was preserved as the phone suddenly got locked while they were fiddling with it,” Satinder said. The video shows ten policemen surrounding Resham Singh, herding him away across the barricade towards the police vehicle. One policeman hits Resham with a Lathi while others push him.
As the police tried to force the army veteran into the car, Resham’s turban was pulled off. “My turban fell on the road when they were forcing me into the vehicle, and they prevented me from picking it up,” Resham told me. “On the way to the station, when I asked them why they stopped me from pricking up my turban, Ram Naresh said ‘yeh pagri toh kya, hum toh baal bhi kaat denge’”—this was merely a turban, we will cut your hair as well.
Resham’s mother and two sisters were taken to the station in a different car, and Satinder and Harjinder were also brought there in another vehicle.
“Ram Naresh and his colleagues tied me to a cot, two cops stood on me and the rest began raining the lathi blows on me,” Resham wrote in the FIR. “Ram Naresh Singh then shouted and asked for oil and pierced the place of my latrine with the baton … I was shrieking in pain. The SHO kept inserting his oiled baton again and again, and only when I fell unconscious was I was handed over to my sisters and mother.”
The police fined them Rs 18,500, despite the fact that they were carrying all required documents, Resham said. The police had also lodged an FIR against the two sisters, along with Resham, stating that the they had jumped out of the car, forcibly tried to remove the barrier, and started abusing and hitting the police. “The policemen set us free only after some men showed up at the police station and warned the policemen that they would release a video of how I was being beaten and my sisters manhandled by the police,” Resham told me. The men who came to the station were from the counting centre and had come once they saw Harjinder and Satinder being taken away, Satinder said. “We were made to sit on the floor for three hours” at the station. Satinder said he got his phone back after three days. Harjinder got his phone back a day after that. Their names were included in Naresh Singh’s FIR.
When the ordeal was over, Resham and his family demanded that the police get his medical examination done at a government hospital and file a report immediately, but this did not happen. “I told the kotwal Sanjiv Sharma to lodge my complaint but he started shouting and threatening us,” he told me. The next day, when they tried once again, the police still did not lodge an FIR telling Resham that it could not be “done without permission from the courts.”
Resham later released a video detailing the shocking incident and showing his injuries, which included heavily bruised backside with the skin peeling off, bruises all over his face and legs. He was unable to sit. He told me it was only after that video went viral and he got public support, including from the Delhi Sikh Gurdwara Management Committee, that he was able to lodge a complaint.
Resham told me it was only after the formal intervention of the DSGMC that the case was registered against the policemen. On 5 May, the committee president of DSGMC Manjinder Singh Sirsa sent a formal complaint to the UP police DGP, highlighting “police brutality” and demanding an FIR against the police for “attempt to murder, custodial torture, unnatural offences and insult to religion.” It stated, “Police have crossed their limits, and in violation of human rights and constitutional rights used excessive restrain and violence insulted the religious beliefs of not only Mr. Resham Singh but of whole Sikh community as Turban and Hair are considered very sacred in Sikh religion.” The DSGMC also demanded an immediate medical examination of the victim by a medical board, an independent judicial inquiry and the withdrawal of the case that was imposed by the police on Resham Singh and his mother and sisters.
Resham’s medical examination was finally conducted on 8 May 2021—five days after the incident—also the day when the FIR was lodged. The sections imposed against the accused policemen included 147 (rioting), 323 (voluntarily causing hurt), 342 (wrongful confinement) and 504 (intentionally causing insult and provoking)—all bailable offences.
The superintendent of Pilibhit district police, Kirit Rathore, told me that an inquiry into the incident has been marked to the deputy superintendent of police, Virendra Vikram. Vikram was asked to submit his inquiry report within a 15-day time period, by 23 May. When I asked Rathore in June how far the case has progressed, he said, “The inquiry is still on.” He added that Ram Naresh had been suspended. “A medical has been done and action will be taken on the basis of whatever evidences come up,” he said.
Resham said the entire police team who assaulted him inside the police station should have been suspended and prosecuted, and not just one police officer. “There were at least eight to ten men in uniform who punched me during the torture,” Resham said. When I asked Rathore what departmental action has been taken against all the other cops, the SP only repeated that a preliminary inquiry against Ram Naresh was on and that a show cause notice will be served to him “only after the outcome of the inquiry report”.
Rathore said the FIR earlier lodged by Ram Naresh Singh against Resham and his sisters would not be quashed. “The police voluntarily cannot quash any FIR and any decision in this regard after the completion of the investigation by the concerned investigation officer.” I tried to contact Ram Naresh on multiple occasions, but he did not take my calls.
Meanwhile, local army veterans have staged sit-ins in front of the police station, Resham told me. “We are building public pressure through protest,” Sunita Gangvar, an advocate and one of the organisers of the protests, told me. “There are eight guilty policemen, but the FIR contains only two or three names,” she said, pointing out that these cops who tortured Resham Singh were the accused of the state. “But nothing is moving here, so far.” The only other police actually named in the FIR is Raees Ahmad. I tried to get his number from the SHO Harsh Vardhan repeatedly, but remained unsuccessful.
In a later video released online on 16 May, Resham spoke of how no investigation has been done despite his FIR. “The police are trying to save their own,” he said. “Where should I go for justice, I need the solidarity of my fellow army men and those who respect the army in this country.” He even appealed to those who consider themselves nationalists, such as the actor Akshay Kumar and “those from Bollywood who make so many pictures in our name and earn in the lakhs and crores,” but do not speak up on incidents like these. At one point, Resham struggles to speak in the video: “what they did to me, I feel ashamed saying. But they felt no shame in doing what they did.”