When his mom Suman Gajanan Kale, a 50-year-old social activist from the Pardhi tribe, didn’t return residence hours after she was allegedly picked by the police in Burudgaon village in Maharashtra’s Ahilyanagar (then Ahmednagar) district in Could 2007, Saheba, then 22, set off in direction of the native police superintendent’s workplace to ask what occurred. What he ultimately found was surprising – Suman had died in police custody, allegedly after being tortured.
Seventeen years later, the wheels of justice proceed to show slowly. Expenses within the case have but to be framed and trial has but to start. After years of pushing, Suman’s household lastly noticed some progress final month, when the Maharashtra authorities appointed advocate Prakash Salsingikar as particular public prosecutor (SPP).
However when the SPP went to the Ahmednagar court docket for a listening to on November 19, he discovered that there wasn’t a single policeman from the state’s Prison Investigation Division (CID) – the unit probing the case — there to help him.
On their half, each district police and the CID declare that the activist died by suicide after consuming poison – though the latter maintains that it was custodial ‘torture’ that prompted her to take that motion. However Suman’s household refutes the declare, saying they had been now combating in two fronts – a authorized battle towards the cops accused of inflicting her demise and the “apathy” of the CID, which they declare is delaying trial within the case.
As soon as thought-about hunter-gatherers, the Pardhi tribe, to which Suman and her household belonged, had been notified as a ‘legal tribe’ below the Prison Tribes Act (CTA) of 1871 below colonial rule. In 1949, the federal government of the newly unbiased India repealed the CTA and in 1952, denotified a number of ‘legal tribes’, together with the Pardhis, however the stigma caught, with the neighborhood being among the many most marginalised within the nation.
Suman Ganjan Kale’s son, Saheba, holds up photographs of the ‘Atmasamarpan Melava,’ during which Suman is seen being felicitated by law enforcement officials. (Categorical photograph by Chandan Haygunde)
Again in his greying two-room home, Suman’s brother Girish Chavan holds up an outdated photograph of Suman being felicitated by a senior police officer. The photograph is already fading, with elements of it, together with half of Suman’s face, peeling and discoloured.
The photograph is from an ‘Atmasamarpan Melava’ – or a give up rally – Chavan tells The Indian Categorical. Eager on serving to the tribe shed its ‘legal tag’, Suman had helped a number of from the tribe “surrender” their lifetime of crime and give up earlier than the police, even incomes accolades for her work.
“She felt dangerous when harmless individuals had been picked up by the police and began serving to cops arrest solely those that had been truly concerned in crimes. That is how she turned a police informer,” says Chavan.
What occurred that day
In keeping with Saheba, his mom was picked up on the morning of Could 12, 2007. She stored asking what she had accomplished mistaken, he says.
When he went to the native SP workplace the subsequent day, he allegedly discovered that his mom had been detained in reference to a dacoity case.
“I got here to know that police detained my mom illegally on the premise of a false assertion given by a girl (they recognized as) Astari Chavan, arrested in a dacoity case… Quickly, we had been informed she had taken poison and was admitted to a non-public hospital,” Saheba, a farmer, says.
On Could 16 – 4 days after Suman was first picked up – the household was knowledgeable of her demise.
“The cops thrashed her so badly that she died…My mom was not a legal and all the time inspired individuals to observe the legislation,” he says.
However the police give a special account of occasions. In keeping with their model, talked about in court docket paperwork, Suman had come into the district SP’s workplace along with her nephew on Could 14 – two days after she was allegedly picked up – claiming she had taken “lice pesticide”. To help their declare, the police cited harassment complaints that she had filed towards her husband.
However a authorized inquiry performed by then sub-divisional Justice of the Peace Vikas Pansare rejected this model. Citing forensic and autopsy information, Pansare’s inquiry report from January 8, 2008 – accessed by The Indian Categorical – claims that Astari was “made to call Suman Kale within the jewelry dacoity case” by policemen. It additionally says that Suman had been “inflicted with a number of wounds by the hands of police” between Could 13 and 14, 2007, within the “unlawful custody of the superintendent of police and his particular investigation staff.”
Days later, the CID started to research the case, and in August 14, 2009 — over two years after Suman’s demise — booked seven policemen and a non-public physician below IPC sections for abetment of suicide, inflicting grievous damage to extract confession and wrongful confinement) amongst others.
All eight had been arrested in December 2010 however had been ultimately launched on bail.
Within the chargesheet filed by the CID in September 2013, the company claimed that the district police picked up Suman from her residence on Could 12, 2007, and allegedly tortured her to get her to admit that she possessed stolen gold and that, unable to take the police therapy, she ultimately consumed poison.
The CID additionally claimed that with a purpose to cowl up the demise, the district police took her to a non-public hospital as an alternative of presidency one and named the physician who ran the hospital as an accused.
Nevertheless, Suman’s household refutes the CID’s case, claiming that no poison was detected in a chemical analyser’s report dated September 9, 2007. “If poison was not detected, then how can or not it’s a case of suicide by poisoning? Clearly, the CID’s investigation was mistaken,” Chavan says.
In January 2021, the Aurangabad Bench directed the trial court docket to contemplate the proof for the offences punishable for homicide, destroying proof and legal conspiracy on the time of framing prices. It additionally stated that the trial court docket “is anticipated to resolve the case inside six months”.
One other photograph from the ‘Atmasamarpan Melava,’ reveals Suman with law enforcement officials. (Particular association)
The order got here on the again of a petition by the household asking for the case to be transferred to the CBI and homicide prices to be invoked towards the accused.
On February 15, 2021, the Supreme Courtroom dismissed Particular Go away Petitions (SLPs) filed by some accused for quashing the HC order. Nevertheless, the largest blow to the case got here in April 2023, when the HC discharged the accused non-public physician.
This order got here solely months after the trial court docket had rejected the same utility from him. “And the CID didn’t even inform us (that he was discharged). The CID didn’t enchantment towards it within the SC. That is extremely suspicious,” Chavan says.
In keeping with Girish Prabhune, a social activist from the Bhatke Vimukta Vikas Parishad and a 2021 Padma Shri awardee, the CID “by no means took the case severely”. Prabhune is amongst these calling for justice within the case.
When requested, CID chief Prashant Burde informed The Indian Categorical that he would “need to verify” and that he didn’t have info on the case “off-hand”.
In the meantime, sad with the case’s progress in courts, Girish sought the assistance of Vivek Vichar Manch, an outfit that focuses on human rights. He additionally demanded a Particular Public Prosecutor for this case.
The request got here via final month, when an SPP was appointed.
“These accountable for Suman’s demise are below the impression that Pardhis can not battle for justice. We wish to show them mistaken. Which is why it’s necessary that Suman will get justice, in order that Pardhis as a neighborhood have extra religion within the authorized system.”
