The role of medical professionals in cases of custodial violence

Policing and Violence in India: Colonial Legacies and Contemporary Realities, edited by Deana Heath and Jinee Lokaneeta, and published by Speaking Tiger, looks at the routineness of police violence in India, as well as its origins and the factors behind its persistence. In the fourth chapter, Jinee Lokaneeta studies the role and responsibilities of medical professionals in instances of police violence. This excerpt from the chapter focusses on the deaths of Jayaraj and Bennix, a father and son living in Sathankulam, Tamil Nadu, who were arrested in June 2020 and tortured in police custody. “In the case of Jeyaraj and Bennix, the medico-legal certificate produced by the doctor who examined them failed to mention the serious injuries on their bodies,” Lokaneeta writes.

“According to the CBI, these tragedies were a result of the custodial torture they had been subjected to, which was ‘sufficient in the ordinary course of nature to cause their death[s].’ It also recorded that, in failing to identify their injuries before they were presented before a magistrate, Dr Vinila denied father and son the medical treatment that may have saved their lives,” she continues. “To make sense of how the medical checks, designed to protect suspects from custodial violence, failed to do so requires understanding their history.”

Jeyaraj and Bennix lived in a small town in Sathankulam, Tamil Nadu, where they owned a shop that sold mobile phones. They were arrested on 19 June 2020, ostensibly for violating pandemic protocols—their shop was open after curfew. Jeyaraj was the first to be arrested at 7:30 pm, by a group of policemen who included an inspector and a sub-inspector, K Balakrishnan. When Jeyaraj’s son, Bennix, went to the Sathankulam police station to find out why his father had been arrested, he saw Balakrishnan beating him. A scuffle ensued between the police and Bennix, and he was arrested. The police thereafter began to torture him—reportedly to “teach him a lesson on how to behave with police”—and his father, an assault that lasted seven hours.

The torture of the two men included sexual assault. According to the Central Bureau of Investigation, which took over the case, they were stripped down to their underwear, made to lower themselves onto a wooden table, and their hands and legs were restrained by police officers. They were then “subjected to…severe beatings with [a] lathi [a wooden stick] on [their] buttocks,” backs, and other parts of their bodies. Although Jeyaraj informed the police that he was diabetic and had high blood pressure, and would not be able to survive the injuries being inflicted on him, the police continued to torture him until 3:00 am. The police then filed a First Information Report, in which Jeyaraj and Bennix were charged with lockdown violations and for an altercation with the police at Kamarajar Chowk, Sathankulam. The CBI later confirmed that these charges were false.