Chennai: A 17-year-old boy suspected to have been involved in a mobile phone snatching case was beaten black and blue by policemen in plain clothes on Friday night.
He was later dropped off with Rs 10 in a desolate area in the small hours on Saturday. The victim, a class VII dropout, youngest of three children, who was assisting his father, a casual labourer with a scrap iron dealer at Pudupet, sat for dinner, when policemen in plain-clothes trooped into his house around 11 pm, on Thursday.
The men claimed they were from a special party formed to crack mobile snatching cases and bundled him into a police vehicle. Neighbours confronted the police who were allegedly reeking of liquor.
The family that went looking for the boy could not locate him. It received a call from their elder son around they 1.30 am that the boy had returned home with injuries. “We moved him to the Government Royapettah Hospital where he narrated the whole episode to the duty doctor who refused to record it in the memo”, charged the victim’s mother who knocked on the doors of the city police Commissioner T.K, Rajendran. The boy told the media he was blindfolded and thrashed near the railway tracks at Velachery.
“A call came on their mobile suggesting that I had been picked up on mistaken identity. It was only after this they dropped me near SRP tools which was deserted around 1 am. I took a share auto ride home”, said the victim.
Sources said the boy was, in fact, picked up by a team from Thuraipakkam police crime wing, and was accused of snatching a mobile near Pallavan House. He was also arraigned in another petty case. However, the police commissioner has ordered an inquiry into the incident by additional commissioner (South) K. Shankar. “It appears to be an exaggeration. A report had been called for into the incident by Sunday morning “, said a senior police officer.
