It all began, his family says, from the fact that 19-year-old Binish can’t hear, and hence didn’t make way for a police patrol blaring horns behind him. However, what the police allegedly did to the Dalit boy in return is now being heard across the state, and all the way to the UN.

The Bangkok-based Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) has taken up Binish’s case, and initiated an email campaign to urge everyone from Kerala Chief Minister V S Achuthanandan to local MP and Defence Minister A K Antony and the district officials to ensure “justice” for Binish. The AHRC has also requested the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture to intervene.

Back home in this town, the local police are about to close investigations into the case. According to Binish’s parents, their speech-and-hearing impaired son was hauled by policemen off the road on the afternoon of February 28, beaten up, taken to a police station, his neck pinned against the wall with lathis, and then burnt with cigarette ends on his leg just for fun — all because he came in the way of a passing police patrol.

The policemen deny the charges, saying there is no hard medical evidence to prove torture, including any eyewitnesses. Claiming that the police probe has come to a dead end, Superintendent of Police Nagaraju Chakilan insists the issue may only be “the hallucinations of a sick boy, who looks like he has a low IQ”.

He adds that doctors had told the investigating officers that Binish had a respiratory infection, and the pain — myalgia — might have made him imagine things.

... contd.