While a case was registered under the sections concerning atrocities against Scheduled Castes, no one has yet been charged as Binish couldn’t tell the name of the police station he was taken to. He was shown a few policemen and asked to identify his “tormentors” at random, but he could not.

Binish’s father Gopalakrishnan, a manual labourer, says the police patrol had picked up Binish, who was on his bicycle, from near a local temple. His mother had been doing temple rituals hoping to make him talk and hear. “Perhaps he did not give way to the police jeep since he can’t hear,”says Gopalakrishnan.

His parents and his autorickshaw-driver brother beagan searching when Binish did not turn up till late evening. By the wee hours, they went to a local police station to lodge a complaint that he was missing. By afternoon a local cable TV channel began airing the news, and soon after, Binish returned home. An auto driver who knew him had picked him up from the roadside, too sick to stand or walk.

His parents claim the policemen took Binish to some unknown hospital before leaving him on the road.

Gopalakrishnan says his son had conveyed to him that when he panicked and tried to flee, he was tied up and thrown into the rear of the police jeep. “He doesn’t know to which police station they took him, but remembers climbing some steps. They kept asking him questions and kept on hurting him when he didn’t answer. They may not have known that he can’t hear or talk. When he returned home, he had several bumps on his head, burn marks and severe pain in his legs, and his throat hurt badly from the lathis that they pinned him to the wall with. He said three cops had together hurt him.”

... contd.