Man taken for questioning found hanging, family says custody death

A man who was picked up and taken to a police station for questioning on Saturday was found hanging in a cowshed, in Jaunpur district on Sunday.

The family of 24-year-old Parveen alias Gollu alleged that the police killed him and later hanged his body to make it look like suicide. Villagers of Marhat refused to cremate the body until an FIR was lodged and action taken against policemen. They also demanded inquiry by an independent agency. The postmortem report of the victim is awaited.

After the incident, police was deployed in Marhat. Additional force was also deployed at Khutan police station where Parveen was taken for questioning in an old case of fraud. His body was found in Panauli village. The police said Parveen escaped from their custody.

"If my brother escaped from the police station, why didn't the police inform us, or come looking for him to our house. The police killed Gollu and now they are making a story. Since a strong police force is deployed here, we can't go out to protest or to complain to anyone," said the victim's elder brother Arjun, a labourer.

He also said no case was pending against Parveen and this was the first time the police had picked him. Like his brother, Parveen was also a labourer. He was married and had a one-and-a-half -year-old daughter.

On Saturday evening, the police caught Parveen and his cousin Mukesh when they were standing near a bank. The police said after Parveen escaped, they searched for him in surrounding areas but in vain. The next day, somebody from Panauli village informed them about an unidentified body hanging from a hook inside an unused cowshed at Purushotam. The police went there and seized the body.

Arjun said that after finding the body, the police did not inform them and send it for postmortem. "We came to know about Gollu's death through village pradhan Indrajeet and got the body from the postmortem house," he said.

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