MUMBAI: The Maharashtra State Human Rights Commission (MSHRC) issued notices to the chief secretary, Pune police commissioner and 11 other police officers primarily from Laxminagar police station in Pune over the alleged public humiliation and assault of a 20-year-old suspect, Sultan Shaikh, who was reportedly caught for damaging vehicles.The police had made a video of the incident which went viral on social media.Pune residents Tanaji Karche and Swapnil Jadhav had filed complaints before MSHRC for human rights violations of Shaikh. Karche stated that the police caught Shaikh for damaging vehicles.“They brought him before residents of a locality and paraded him before them stating that he had broken vehicles in the area. They assaulted him in public and asked him to apologise to people,” he said.The video circulated online showed that Shaikh was paraded in public with his hands tied by a rope, forced to perform squats and abused in public.Justice AM Badar, chairperson of MSHRC, while referring to the complaints, noted in his order that the complainants as well as the photographs annexed to the complaints reveal that the police department of Pune had “virtually imposed physical punishment on the victim instead of following due process of law”.The commission observed that it prima facie amounted to a violation of the victim’s human rights, and scheduled the next hearing of the case on Sept 9.MSHRC held that the police commissioner, who did not respond to the Maharashtra State Human Rights Commission notices earlier, appeared to have been negligent in preventing the abuse and safeguarding the victim’s fundamental human rights.The order passed said that the chief secretary was “free to file a reply to clarify the stand of govt.”
