Video Showing Man Beaten By Police With Belt, Cops Suspended

A viral video on Twitter shows a man repeatedly being beaten with a leather belt by Deoria district police in Uttar Pradesh. The man, identified as Sumit Goswami, was brought to the police station on charges of mobile piracy on Friday, 10 January.

In the video, three police officers, including the chief constable, can be seen brutally beating the man, and abusing him while interrogating him regarding the theft. The officers seen in the video have been identified as chief constable Lal Bihar, constable Chandramouleshwar Singh and constable Jitendra.

Deoria Police have since released a statement online acknowledging the incident and the actions of the constables in the video. According to the statement, an inquiry into the incident has been conducted and the three policemen have been suspended.

Incidents of police brutality and violence have risen in recent times, especially with ongoing protests against the controversial Citiizenship Amendment Act (CAA), National Register of Citizens (NRC) and National Population Register (NPR).

Minhajuddin, an LLM student in Jamia Millia Islamia University, was severely injured in the violence that erupted in the central University on Sunday, 15 December 2019. According to those with him, Minhajuddin was brutally beaten up by the Delhi Police, in the course of which his left eye was severely damaged.

Police brutality was also witnessed at Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) when students started moving along the University road to the main gate called Bab-e-Syed for a planned protest against CAA.

A fact finding report into the incident claims that local police and RAF deployed at university circle started abusing students and tried to provoke them, leading to tear gas shells, rubber bullets, stun grenades, and pellets being fired into the crowd inside the gate, which led to students hiding in buildings, says the report. The firing resulted in several injuries among students, including an arm amputation.