An eerie silence prevails along the narrow stretch that leads to the tiled house of a small mobile shop owner in Sattankulam town. As outsiders walk through the mostly deserted lane, the residents, on hearing footsteps, peep through the windows in fear and suspicion. The mobile shop owner, J. Benicks, 31, is no more. Two weeks ago, he and his father, P. Jayaraj, 58, were arrested by the police for a seemingly trivial reason and brutally beaten at the Sattankulam police station, barely 600 metres away. They both died in hospital.
Their deaths have shaken not just Thoothukudi district of Tamil Nadu, where Sattankulam is located, but the whole country. The two men were tortured in the most gruesome manner, according to witnesses, and the minutest details of the incident are in the public domain. Public anger is evident in the town — soon after hearing about the deaths, protesters filled the streets of Sattankulam demanding justice.
Altercation and arrest
The first version of the story in the media quoted locals who said Jayaraj was arrested on June 19 after an altercation between him and the police on keeping his son’s mobile phone shop open in violation of lockdown rules. When Benicks questioned the detention of his father, he was also taken into custody. At the Sattankulam police station, they were both allegedly thrashed by the policemen, particularly by Sub-Inspectors Balakrishnan and Raghu Ganesh in the presence of Inspector Sridhar.
As is the case with such incidents, several theories now float around. However, the most authentic seems the following sequence of events, as P. Veerapandi recounts. Veerapandi drives an autorickshaw from a stand close to Benicks’ mobile phone shop and is an associate of the family. He says: “On June 18 night, at about 8 p.m., the workers of a tile shop close to Benicks’ mobile phone shop were waiting in front of their closed workplace to get their wages from the owner. Sub-Inspector Balakrishnan and constable Muthuraj, who arrived at the spot, abused them verbally and asked them to leave the place. After the police left the spot, the workers also started leaving slowly. Jayaraj, who was going to buy idli batter for the household, stopped on the way and asked them why they were glum. Upon hearing their story of the policemen’s attitude and verbal abuse, Jayaraj asked them to wait for a few more minutes. Apparently, a police head constable, who was watching the whole episode from a distance, passed on this information to his colleagues.”
The matter didn’t end there. The next evening, Veerapandi says he noticed a police vehicle parked near the Kamaraj Statue, which is about 50 feet away from Benicks’ shop. Inspector Sridhar was waiting inside the vehicle, he says, ostensibly to intercept bike riders who were riding without masks. While Sridhar sat inside the police vehicle, Balakrishnan and his team stopped errant bikers. After a few minutes of checking, Balakrishnan started abusing the traders in an apparent retort to Jayaraj’s support for them the previous night.
Onlookers reported later that the policeman threatened physical violence against Jayaraj, even at that point. “The constable who overheard the previous night’s conversation was also in the vicinity. He made a phone call to the Sub-Inspector and informed him that Jayaraj was present there. The police asked Jayaraj some questions about Benicks’ shop being open and forced him into the police vehicle,” Veerapandi says.
When Benicks, who was inside the shop, saw this, he rushed to the police station. He apparently found Sridhar and Balakrishnan verbally abusing his father in the presence of a few more people, including local advocates who had come to the police station in connection with their cases. As the policemen beat his father, Benicks intervened. In the melee that ensued, Balakrishnan lost his balance and fell. “On seeing this, Sridhar screamed in anger and asked all the policemen there to thrash both Jayaraj and Benicks,” says Veerapandi, who had gone to the station along with a few other auto drivers to attempt to free Jayaraj and Benicks. “When we asked the police to release them, Sridhar and Balakrishnan warned all of u