A Killing, Beatings, Maimings and Rape: The Extraordinary Torture of the Pardhi Community at the Hands of MP Police

Choti Kaneri, Guna: Nine houses stand interspersed among lush green farmland at the rear end of the Choti Kaneri village in Bamori Tehsil of Guna district. These big and small structures house women and children from the Pardhi community. Adult male members are conspicuously absent. It turns out that they are either in jail or on the run, fearing arrest.

Whether criminally involved or not, the men here each face at least half a dozen cases, ranging from theft to murder. Most of these cases are unfamiliar to the men, but as members of the highly criminalised Pardhi caste, they are aware that the state machinery will not spare any of them.

On July 13, however, the men had all returned to the village. It was a special evening – 24-year-old Deva Pardhi was set to marry his childhood sweetheart, Nikita. Deva’s house was lit up, and tractors were decorated. Relatives from both within and outside the village had gathered at his house. Amid blaring music and pre-wedding haldi rituals, a large contingent of police suddenly barged in on the celebrations.

Deva’s aunt, Karpooribai, says that the family initially thought that cops wanted to take part in the feast. “Lavish meals were being cooked. Why would they want to disrupt the celebration, we wondered,” she adds.

But the police, who the families identified as cops of the nearby Jhagar police chowki, soon surrounded the house. The team comprised male officers, all armed. As the family and guests scattered in panic, the police began indiscriminately thrashing everyone, they say. From old people to little kids, no one was spared. A six-year-old with hearing and speech impairment was beaten and his arm was broken.

Deva was taken into custody, and his uncle Gangaram Pardhi, who tried to reason with the police by explaining that Deva was about to get married in a few hours, was also picked up.

It was around 4:30 pm when Deva and Gangaram were taken to the Jhagar police chowki. The family members and others who had gathered for the wedding soon followed the police to the Jhagar police chowki.

In time, other Pardhi villagers too arrived at the police station, only to see Deva slouched at one corner, the turmeric on his face now mixed with his blood. Commotion broke. An FIR was registered against the family members for “obstructing the police”.

The emotionally-charged villagers insisted that Deva be allowed to at least marry. “They rebuked us and used filthy language against Deva and his young bride. Asked us if we also wanted to have the suhaagraat (wedding night) celebrated at the police station,” a relative says.

A custodial death

The men were held up at the Jhagar police chowki for a brief while. Cops from three chowkis – Jhagar, Myana and Ruthiyai – were involved in the operation. The duo was violently thrashed before being sent ahead to Myana police chowki, around 40 kilometres away. The family says police did not take the two to the functional police station but an old one that had long since been deserted.

Here, Deva and Gangaram were both tied up, hung from the ceiling, their faces covered tightly with black cloths and beaten up mercilessly. The police threw hot water on their faces while continuing to beat them. Gangaram’s wife Shalini tells The Wire that iron rods were inserted into their anuses and some liquid, which she suspects was petrol, was also poured.

As the thrashing continued overnight, Deva died.

“Even when his lifeless body was hung to the ceiling, the police suspected he was ‘acting dead’. So, they took a pincher and pulled his flesh out from his thigh. Deva didn’t flinch,” Karpooribai says. The police panicked and fearing that Gangaram would die too, finally stopped beating him. By then his limbs and head were severely injured.  

By the night of July 13, according to Gangaram, Deva had died and his body was kept in the Guna civil hospital morgue. But the family was not informed, he says. They found out only when a man working as a sweeper at the hospital identified Deva and informed a community leader. The family reached the hospital along with Deva’s fiancé, Nikita. When the police refused to give information about his death, Nikita tried to immolate herself. The young woman has since been in shock and is undergoing treatment in Delhi. 

On July 16, several emotionally charged women from the community gathered outside the collector’s office seeking justice. Unable to contain their anger, a few women had removed their clothes as a mark of protest. A case was registered against the protesting women.

This is the second FIR against the family members – just because they demanded justice.

‘Punishment’ for cops

Gangaram was finally produced before a magistrate court on July 15, over 40 hours after he was picked up. Seeing his condition and the fact that Deva was already dead, the magistrate Nitendra Singh Tomar refused to send Gangaram to police custody. He ordered for a medical check-up and Gangaram was subsequently hospitalised. Tomar later was assigned as the judicial magistrate to inquire into the illegal detention and custodial torture of the two. 

It has been close to two months since Deva was picked up from his residence right before his wedding ceremony and killed in police custody. The police men and women involved in picking him, placing him in illegal custody, killing him and mercilessly torturing Gangaram have all been identified both by the family and most importantly by Gangaram, who along with being a victim of the crime, is also a prime witness. The state administration, however, have so far only “transferred” the responsible police personnel from a police station to the head office – a posting considered to be a “punishment” as cops at the head office can no longer make easy money by taking bribes. Among those transferred are Sanjit Singh Mavai, Devraj Singh Parihar and Uttam Singh Kushwaha.

‘Unknown perpetrators’

Last week, following the judicial magistrate’s report, a first information report was finally registered but against “unknown policemen”. This, the police claim was done as Gangaram and his family were not able to name the murderers but had only identified them by the “stars” on their uniforms. The Wire checked this with family members and they claim that this is not entirely true. Some policemen, they claim, were already known to the family owing to past cases against other family members. Also, the stars on the uniform are enough to identify the policemen.

“After all, how many three and two star cops are attached to one police station?” asks Hansurabai, Deva’s mother. 

Besides those three policemen who were transferred, the family has identified other policemen, including Vikas Munshi from Myana police chowki, Rajendra Singh Chouhan, Santosh Tiwari and Bunty from Jhagar police chowki, and Subdivisional Police Officer Deepa Dodve. No action has been initiated against any of them.  

The FIR mentions three sections – 105, 115 (2) and 3 (5) of the Bhartiya Nyaya Sanhita for “culpable homicide not amounting to murder”, “voluntarily causing hurt” and “common intention”. The crucial sections of murder and those under The Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities Act) have not been applied. The classification of the Pardhi community across Madhya Pradesh is inconsistent, with the community categorised as a Scheduled Caste in some districts and Scheduled Tribe in other. In Guna district, the community is classified as SC.

The police’s crime did not end here.

One of Deva’s relatives, who was present at the wedding, was allegedly raped by a policeman. This happened as family members ran for their lives. “I was pinned down by a policeman in a room and he raped me,” the woman tells The Wire during a visit to the village last week. She knew her rapist. Rajendra Singh Chouhan, a cop attached to the Ruthiyai police chowki, has allegedly harassed her in the past too, on many occasions. No action has been taken against Rajendra.

‘Enough tragedy’

Every time the woman mustered the courage to report the incident to the police, a new tragedy has struck.

Two weeks ago, Deva’s elder brother Sindvaj, depressed by the police’s attitude and certain that the men responsible for killing his brother would never be punished, hanged himself.

“This house has seen enough tragedy already. This one family has lost three brothers (the eldest died in a road accident in March) in less than six months. Even after their death, we don’t expect the state to do much. Where do I stand a chance?” the woman tells this reporter. The rape survivor is also worried that more cases will be slapped against the men and the police might sexually abuse other female members of the family if she comes forward.

Soon after Deva’s death, as per procedure laid down under Section 176 (1A) of the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC), a judicial magistrate inquiry was set up. Sources in the Madhya Pradesh state home department have confirmed that magistrate Tomar has meticulously recorded Gangaram’s statement, along with those of Deva’s mother Hansurabai and other members present at the house on the day of the wedding. The postmortem report too establishes that Deva died due to the injuries inflicted all over his body, as against the police’s flimsy claim of “death due to heart attack”. 

Gangaram’s statement too matches the circumstantial evidence that the magistrate has gathered over the course of his inquiry, a senior official from the state home department, who is privy to the inquiry, told The Wire. For instance, although Deva and Gangaram were picked up by Jhagar police chowki, they were taken to an old structure where Myana police chowki once existed. This old police station, people say, is used as a torture site. Suspects are illegally detained here, tortured and moved to the actual police station only days later. The structure doesn’t have CCTV cameras, a mandatory equipment in all police stations, and the police don’t make any diary entry of persons brought there for questioning. 

Sources in the home department share that when Tomar asked the police to produce CCTV footage, they could not. They were also unable to explain the many serious injuries on Deva and Gangaram’s body. While section 176 (1A) of the CrPC mandates inquiry in cases of death and rape in custody, sources say the magistrate has expanded the scope of his inquiry and has also included the torture inflicted on Gangaram in the inquiry report. The judicial magistrate’s inquiry report was submitted to the home department on August 23. 

‘Was to be an encounter, Atrocity law gets tricky’

So even after damning judicial magistrate, why have the police not arrested those involved in the murder?

The answer lies in the attitude of the state machinery towards the Pardhi community and several other nomadic communities that have been historically wronged and continue to be highly criminalised. This reporter met Deputy Superintendent of Police (DySP) Yuvraj Singh Chouhan, who was assigned the job of inquiring into the allegations levelled against his subordinate police. Along with openly airing his biases against the community and repeatedly addressing them as “criminal tribes”, Yuvraj Singh also claimed that the police had originally wanted to kill Deva and Gangaram in a staged “encounter”. “But then they are from reserved caste groups. We can handle other sections but the Atrocity law gets tricky,” he nonchalantly claimed before this reporter. The conversation between the officer and this reporter has been audio recorded.

Gangaram, an able-bodied person at the time when he was arrested, is in a wheelchair now. He is unable to walk anymore; his legs have large open wounds and one of his hands are broken. Even though visibly injured – and it is amply clear that the injuries were all inflicted while he was in custody – he has been taken into custody multiple times in the past two months. The courts have denied him bail on at least two occasions. The police claim he has 17 cases pending against him, involving theft, dacoity, attempt to murder, illegal liquor and drugs. Deva, the police claim, was wanted in seven cases – all of robbery. 

Lawyers refuse access to papers

As the criminalisation of the community continues, almost every family has a local lawyer or two permanently working for them. The lawyers are evidently in cahoots with the police but families say they have no choice. One lawyer named Bhoop Narayan who is appearing for Gangaram has refused the family access to any legal papers. He neither informs them about pending cases, nor speaks to them of the legal strategy he will adopt. “But what choice do we have?” Gangaram’s wife Shalini asks. 

Since the murder, several human rights organisations have rallied to support the family in their fight for justice. Advocate Tasvir Parmar from the Criminal Justice and Police Accountability Project, a Bhopal-based organisation that works closely with tribes facing criminalisation, shared that he and his colleagues are working to secure reliable local legal representation. “We are also in the process of filing a writ petition in the high court to demand a fair investigation,” Parmar told The Wire.

Similarly, members of the Shahri Mazdur Sangathan, a collective that has long supported the Pardhi community, have been assisting the families in rebuilding their shattered lives. With all the male members of Hansurabai’s family already deceased, the women are left to fend for themselves and their young children. The collective recently helped her secure a small relief fund from the district collector.

Shivani Taneja, a member of the collective, emphasised that nearly every individual in the community has experienced police brutality and human rights violations at some point in their lives. The real question, however, is whether the state is willing to listen to their stories – and take action.