New Delhi, 26th March 2020. Member of human rights organization PUCL Prof. Prabhakar Sinha has said that amid the lockdown, the police has become a more serious threat than the epidemic.
Professor Sinha has written to the National Human Rights Commission on the police Brutality in lockdown, which he has also posted on his FB timeline.
Full text of his letter is as follows –
To
The Chairperson,
National Human Rights Commission
New Delhi
Sub: Police’s Criminal Brutality in the Wake of the Lockdown.
Sir,
A nationwide lockdown has been ordered to check the spread of the dreaded Corona. A lockdown is not a curfew. In a lockdown, the people are allowed to go out to buy grocery, vegetables, medicine and visit banks or go to ATMs for money. If these are not permitted many times more people would die of starvation than those who may die due to Corona. But the police have become a greater threat to the people than the disease which has caused the lockdown.
The people going out for grocery, medicine, milk, vegetable or money to the bank or ATM are being beaten up and/or humiliated by the police. They are treating the people worse than the police under the British rule.
The act of the police is criminal liable for punishment and is the grossest violation of human rights.
The videos of the criminal act of the police from Delhi, Punjab, UP are available on the social media like Facebook.
The minimum that the NHRC can and should do is to direct the government to order the police not to beat and or humiliate the people found on the road and invite the people to send to the Commission the video of the beating and humiliation of the people with relevant details for appropriate action.
The Commission may take appropriate action against the guilty. The Commission should also use its own agency to collect evidence of this crime being committed in public with fully impunity. Please act swiftly dispensing with the red tape.
Yours faithfully,
Prabhakar Sinha
Member, PUCL
Nepali Kothi.
Club Road,
Muzaffarpur -842002
Bihar
