Chennai: Seven juveniles from Tamil Nadu Slum Clearance Board (TNSCB) tenements in Semmenchery were picked up in connection with a burglary case by khaki-clad cops during the small hours on Monday.
The cops had thrashed the boys using a PVC pipe to admit the crime alleged the parents. An activist who witnessed the beatings made an FB post. Six of them were released after an eight hours ordeal while one was remanded on charges of stealing six Android Mobile phones from a cell phone shop in the neighbourhood.
The boys aged between 15 and 18 were picked. One reportedly told the cops that he disposed the mobiles with the help of the six others while Hari, (18), prime suspect who saw the cops arrive scooted away.
“Around 3 am, two cops knocked on our doors. They told me my grandson was involved in a burglary case and had to be taken for interrogations. They came in, and pushed me down in the process and tore my saree,” said a grandmother of a suspect.
“My son is not a criminal. He was beaten up. He came home with injuries in hands and face, reminders of police brutality,” said a woman. Police said Hari and the boy, who was remanded broke into the shop, and decamped mobile phones. Their act was recorded in the CCTV based on which they acted.
The cops also took exception to the charges leveled by the families on thrashing the juveniles. However, the cops admitted that they had taken the juveniles to the police station where they were detained for nearly eight hours. “We produced the arrested juvenile before Juvenile Justice Board (JJB), which sent him to the observation home in Chengelpet. The rest were let off after we recovered mobile phones from their possession,” said a senior police official.
“One of the boys picked up has to give an exam at School which he obviously couldn’t given the quantum of physical abuse he was subjected to,” noted Nithyanand Jayaraman, activist.
“As many as 6,784 families, 26,000 people from 23 slum pockets (some pockets as old as 100 years) were forcibly evicted and shoved into 158 square feet houses built inside the marshland. The children grow up with no role models, no healthy entertainment, a belligerent police, desperate angry fathers, overworked mothers, hostile or absent teachers. TNSCB tenements in Semmenchery, Perumbakkam, Kannagi Nagar and Ezhil Nagar are state-sponsored criminal production ghettoes,” the post by Nithyanand read.
