My friend (and possibly fellow Silk-lister) Manish Jethani was
assaulted by a cop last night for merely walking down the road while
talking on the phone late at night.
Can anyone here help this get media attention?
http://community.livejournal.com/bangalore/302879.html
Today I was actually physically assaulted by a cop in Bangalore.
It happened 19 minutes ago (at 12:25 AM according to my phone), when
I was walking towards my office at Bannerghatta Road after picking up
dinner at the Forum mall as usual. The cop observed me while I was
passing Christ College, talking on the phone with my brother in
Mumbai. I walked on, feeling secure.
By the time I reached the Accenture building near Dairy Circle
(Bannerghatta Road), there was an SUV-like vehicle there, with two
cops standing outside. As I approached them, one of them snatched my
phone away from me while the other one struck me on my left calf with
his lathi.
Needless to say, I was shocked. They refused to return my phone, even
as my brother listened at the other end. I was treated like I had
committed a crime. They kept asking me if "I thought too much of
myself", because I was walking in the night alone while talking on
the phone to "girls".
The one that snatched my phone was a proper cop, as he was dressed as
one and did all the talking. The other one who assaulted me (on
instructions by the former) was either a constable or just a driver,
as he was dressed in plain-ish khakhi clothes and drove the vehicle
afterwards.
When asked why I was assaulted, their reasoning was that walking on
the road at that hour while simultaneously talking on the phone was
not allowed. They said they were there to "protect" me and that this
was not Bombay or Delhi where I could walk freely on the road at any
time of the night.
I was so upset that I refused to budge from there without getting a
reasonable explanation and an apology from them. Finally they drove
away.
They took down some of my details, and I noted (mentally) some of
theirs. I have the name of the cop and the police station he's based
in, but I won't reveal it on LiveJournal without knowing the
implications on my case.
During the day, I'll go to the police station to register a complaint.
I could post this on my own journal instead of [LJ] bangalore, but
this is not so much about me as it is about us as citizens of this
country. Have the police started making their own laws? If I, an
educated and well-to-do citizen, can be harassed by cops in this
manner, what chance does the majority of the country's population
have? Is this the reason the common man resorts to violence so often?
--
Kiran Jonnalagadda
http://www.pobox.com/~jace
