Youth dies in police custody in UP's Kasganj
A youth called for questioning at Kasganj police station in Kasganj district of Uttar Pradesh in a kidnapping case died in custody. According to police, Altaf, 21, had strangulated himself using a string from his jacket hood in the washroom of the police lock-up.
"One Altaf (of Nagla Syed locality) was called for questioning in Kasganj police station in a case related to IPC section 363 (kidnapping) and 366 (kidnapping, abducting or inducing a woman to compel her marriage) on Tuesday morning," narrating the sequence of events, Superintendent of Police, Kasganj, Rohan Pramod Botre said on Wednesday.
During interrogation, he requested the policemen to go to the washroom and was allowed to use the washroom inside the lock-up. "He was wearing a black colour jacket. He tried to strangulate himself with a string on the (jacket) hood that he tied to the tap of the toilet. When he did not return for some time, the policemen went inside and found him unconscious. He was rushed to the community health centre, Ashok Nagar in Kasganj, where he died," the SP added.
Postmortem of the victim is being conducted, he said, adding that five policemen have been suspended for negligence in the wake of the incident.
"The lax policemen will be punished. We have suspended five policemen in this connection," he said.
However, Altaf's family members alleged that he was killed by police inside the lock-up. The opposition Samajwadi Party also attacked the Yogi Adityanath government for 'yet another custodial death'. The party took to Twitter to attack the Yogi Adityanath government, calling the incident another misdeed of UP"s "thoko (trigger-happy) police".
"In UP, under the patronage of the chief minister, criminal and police are committing an encounter of law and order. The guilty policemen should face a murder case and must be punished," the party said in a tweet in Hindi.
The incident comes close on the heels of a sanitation worker, who was accused of stealing Rs 25 lakh from Jagdishpura police station in Agra, dying in police custody after his health deteriorated during interrogation.
