List of cases of police brutality in India

This is a list of notable cases of police brutality in India. This list also includes events from the British Raj.

British India

• ?? September 1895 – In Old Dhule Township, Maharashtra, Khambete Guruji, inspired by Lokmanya Tilak, started Sarvajanik Ganeshotsav. On the day of Anant Chaturdashi in 1895, the Ganesh Visarjan procession passed from the vicinity of the Sai Masjid, and communal altercations between Hindus and Muslims ensued. To control the riot, the police open fired on the crowd killing and wounding many. Till date, the Ganpati temple is known as the Khuni (lit. Bloody) Ganpati. However it acts as a symbol of communal harmony with both Hindus and Muslims participating in the Ganeshotsave^[1]
• 15 April 1919 – After the Jallianwala Bagh massacre, protests occurred in Gujranwala against the killings of civilians at Amritsar. Police and aircraft were used against the protestors, resulting in at least 379 deaths and leaving more than a thousand people injured.^[2]
• 12 December 1930 – Bombay cotton mill worker Babu Genu Said was crushed by a truck at the order of police. He was an active participant in the protests, organized by Indian independence activists against the import of foreign made cloth. His death resulted in a huge wave of anger, strikes, and protests throughout Bombay.

Post-Independence

1950s

• 13 June 1959 – The Angamaly firing involved police firing at a group of people marching to the police station protesting against the incumbent Communist government. The firing killed seven people and injured many others.^[3]

1960s

• 25 March 1966 – Pravir Chandra Bhanj Deo, first Oriya ruler and 20th Maharaja of Bastar state, was killed in police firing at the steps of his own palace at Jagdalpur along with many others.^[4]

1970s

• 1976 – The Rajan case.
• 18 April 1976 – The Turkman gate demolition and firing.
• 1979 to 1980 – The Bhagalpur blindings was an incident in Bhagalpur in the state of Bihar, India when police blinded 31 undertrials (or convicted criminals, according to some versions), by pouring acid into their eyes.

1980s

• 20 April 1981 – The 1981 Indravelli massacre was an incident where a gathering of Gond Adivasis, some organised by the Kondapalli Sitaramayya faction of the CPI(ML) and some attending the local market, were fired on by police officers at the village of Indravelli in Andhra Pradesh. The official report claimed that a group of 30 police and five officials opened fire after they were attacked and one of their number speared to death. The number of civilian deaths was cited as 13. Investigations by journalists and local human rights groups place the number of police present in the dozens, and the number of victims between 60 and 250^[5][6]

• 22 May 1987 – The Hashimpura massacre took place during the Hindu-Muslim riots in Meerut city in Uttar Pradesh state, India, when 19 personnel of the Provincial Armed Constabulary (PAC) allegedly rounded up 42 Muslim youths from the Hashimpura mohalla (locality) of the city, took them in truck to the outskirts, near Murad Nagar, in Ghaziabad district, where they were shot and their bodies were dumped in water canals. A few days later dead bodies were found floating in the canals.

1990s

• 30 October 1992 – 2 November 1992 – Ayodhya firing incident took place when Uttar Pradesh police fired live ammunition at civilians who were religious devotees or kar sevaks, assembled near the Ram Janmabhoomi site at Ayodhya.
• 1–2 October 1994 – The Rampur Tiraha firing involved police firing on unarmed Uttarakhand activists at Rampur Tiraha (crossing) in Muzaffarnagar district in Uttar Pradesh in India on the night of 1–2 October 1994. The activists, part of the agitation for the separate state of Uttarakhand, were going to Delhi to stage a dharna at Raj Ghat on Gandhi Jayanti, the following day, when alleged unprovoked police firing in the night of 1 October led to the death of six activists, and some women were allegedly raped and molested in the ensuing melee.
• 25 November 1994 – The Koothuparamba firing was a police action in the Kannur district of Kerala. The firing happened after the inauguration of the Co-operative Urban Bank's evening branch, when the DYFI protested against Communist Marxist Party (CMP) leader and Kerala's Minister, M.V. Raghavan. The police fired at the crowd for both the protection of the Minister and public and private property. Five DYFI activists were dead and six people were injured.
• 31 August 1995 - The 1995 Kodiyankulam violence, where a force of 600 policemen attacked the all-Dalit village of Kodiyankulam in Thoothukudi district, Tamil Nadu.
• 1999 – The Manjolai Labourers massacre was brutal police action on a procession taken out in support of agitating tea estate workers, claimed 17 lives in Thirunelveli, Tamil Nadu.^[7][8]

2000s

• 2003 – The Muthanga incident was a brutal police action on Adivasis who had gathered under Adivasi Gothra Mahasabha (ADMS) in protest to the Kerala Government's delay in allotting them land, which had been contracted in October 2001. Two fatalities were officially confirmed, however the government later put the death toll at five.^[9][10] More than 15 Adivasis were fatally wounded.^[11]
• 2006 – Police opened fire on people protesting against land acquisition for SEZ of Videocon at Maan village in Pune.^[12]
• 2007 – Nandigram violence – Police opened fire on villagers protesting against land acquisition for building a SEZ with Indonesian real-estate company Salim group at Nandigram village in East Midnapore, West Bengal.^[13][14]
• 2009 – The Beemapally police shooting saw the police opening fire on the Muslim fishing community at Beemapally in Trivandrum District, Kerala who had gathered to protest the police inaction in controlling goons. The firing killed 6 and injured around 43-52 people—all Muslims.^{[15][16][17][18]}
• 23 July 2009 – at Khwairamband market, Imphal, Manipur police commandos killed an unarmed youth Ch Sanjit Meitei in an alleged encounter and later claiming to seize a pistol on him; in the ensuing encounter a pregnant lady Rabina Devi was also killed, whom the police claimed was shot during the crossfire.^{[citation needed]}

2010s

• 2011 – The police opened fire on protesters protesting against the Jaitapur Nuclear Power Plant and killed one of the protesters.^[19]
• 3 June 2011 – The Forbesganj firing was an act of state brutality in which four villagers were killed near Forbesganj, a town in Bihar, India. An inquiry into the incident, conducted by reputed NGO ANHAD, suggests a role of politicians from the Bharatiya Janata Party in the killings. The residents of the village of Bhajanpur were protesting the grant of land to a factory owned by the son of Bharatiya Janata Party politician Ashok Agarwal.
• 5 June 2011 – The 2011 Indian anti-corruption movement.
• 2013 – The Dhule Shootout was an incident in which police opened fire on violent Muslim youths killing 6 and injuring around 20. Police were also involved in burning Muslim houses and destroying their property.^[20]
• 25 August 2015 – The Patidar community organised an assembly of over 500,000 people at the GMDC Ground in Ahmedabad demanding OBC quota. The convener Hardik Patel led others remaining there on hunger strike after the formal rally was over. Police arrested him in the evening, using a lathicharge during which journalists were among those injured.^[21]
• 13 October 2015 – Punjab police shot two protestors and injured 50 others at a protest in Kotkapura, Punjab, following the Guru Granth Sahib desecration in different parts of Punjab. Police claimed to be acting in self-defence.^[22]
• 2015 – The Andhra shootout was an incident in the Seshachalam forest in Chittoor District, Andhra Pradesh that killed 20 suspected woodcutters.
• 2018 – The Thoothukudi violence^[23] was an incident in Thoothukudi, Tamil Nadu where 13 unarmed protestors were killed and 100+ injured by the Tamil Nadu Police.^[24]
• 2019 –The 2019 Jamia Milia Islamia attack, during the Citizenship Amendment Act protests, police attacked student protesters as well as non-protesting students at the campus of Jamia Milia Islamia^[25][26][27] On the same day, Police and Rapid Action Force injured several students—including some serious injuries—by firing tear-gas shells, rubber bullets, stun grenades and pellets at students of the Aligarh Muslim University protesting against the same act. The security forces reportedly hurled communal abuses at the students. The forces fired tear gas shell inside hostel rooms and set ablaze vehicles belonging to students.^[28][29][30]

2020s

• 22 June 2020 – Custodial death of father and son, Thoothukudi, Tamil Nadu The duo had been beaten, brutally tortured, and sexually assaulted.^{[31][32][33][34][35][36]}
• 23 September 2021 – In Sipajhar, Assam, three people were killed and several others injured by police firing during a protest staged by evicted residents.^[37][38]

See also

• Law enforcement in India
• Police Complaints Authority (India)
• Police Mitra scheme

References

1. Abhishek, Pandey (4 September 2017). "Khooni Ganpati Story". hindi.news18.com. news18. Retrieved 4 September 2017.
2. Nigel Collett (15 October 2006). The Butcher of Amritsar: General Reginald Dyer. A&C Black. p. 263. ISBN 978-1-85285-575-8.
3. "Remembering the Angamaly police firing". The New Indian Express. 12 June 2009. Retrieved 31 July 2021.
4. A king mulls over two strategies, The Hindu, 25 April 2013. (Story about Pravir Chandra's great-nephew.)
5. von Fürer-Haimendorf, Christoph (1982). . University of California Press. Archived from the original on 23 May 2022.
6. Raghuram, M. (13 June 1981). "Carnage at Indravelli: A Report". Economic and Political Weekly. 16 (24): 1048. JSTOR 4369932.
7. "THE TIRUNELVELI MASSACRE". Frontline. Tamil Nadu, India. 13 August 1999.
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9. . The Hindu. 20 February 2003. Archived from the original on 29 December 2004. Retrieved 20 April 2012.
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11. . The Hindu. 25 February 2003. Archived from the original on 4 October 2013. Retrieved 20 April 2012.
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16. "City police chief justifies firing at Cheriathura".
17. "India: Sitting Ducks – A Beemapalli reflection – South Asia Citizens Web". South Asia Citizens Web. 4 June 2018. Retrieved 4 June 2018.
18. "Kerala Police fires at fishing community, six dead – NCHRO". NCHRO. 18 May 2009. from the original on 25 January 2021. Retrieved 30 July 2021.
19. "One killed at Jaitapur police firing".
20. Deshpande, Vinaya (16 January 2013). "Dhule riots reflect changing nature of communal violence, says activist". The Hindu. ISSN 0971-751X. Retrieved 5 November 2020.
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26. "Police crackdown in Jamia made it epicentre of anti-CAA protests". India Today. 28 December 2019. Retrieved 31 December 2019.
27. Baruah, Amit (17 December 2019). "News Analysis: In Jamia, entering a library is a first for the police". The Hindu. ISSN 0971-751X. Retrieved 31 December 2019.
28. "AMU protests: Report puts question mark on number of detained students". The Hindu. 19 December 2019. ISSN 0971-751X. Retrieved 9 January 2021.
29. Ahmad, Salik (18 December 2019). "AMU: Student's Hand Amputated, 'Police Violence Worse Than In Jamia'". Outlook India. Retrieved 9 January 2021.
30. "AMU violence: Court orders UP police chief, CRPF head to act against officers who attacked students". Scroll.in. 24 February 2020. Retrieved 9 January 2021.
31. Tuticorin, India Today Web Desk (25 June 2020). "Tuticorin custodial death: Kin say father-son duo was sexually abused in police custody, outrage in Tamil Nadu". India Today. Retrieved 25 June 2020.
32. "Tension prevails in Tamil Nadu's Sattankulam as trader, son held during lockdown die". The Hindu. 23 June 2020. ISSN 0971-751X. Retrieved 25 June 2020.
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