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I was tortured, says Purohit
Allegations of TORTURE: Malegaon blast case accused sadhvi Pragnya Singh Thakur arrives at the MCOCA court in Mumbai on Monday. The seven accused, including her, were remanded to judicial custody till December 3, after they alleged they were tortured by the Anti-Terrorism Squad of the Maharashtra police.
Mumbai: Malegaon blast suspect Lieutenant-Colonel Prasad Purohit on Monday levelled allegations of torture against the Maharashtra Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) in court.
He was produced, along with six other suspects — Pragnya Singh Thakur, Shiv Narayan Kalsanghra, Shyam Sahu, Ajay Rahirkar, Ramesh Upadhyay and Jagdish Mhatre — in the special court under the Maharashtra Control of Organised Crimes Act (MCOCA).
All seven were remanded to judicial custody till December 3.
Narrating his days in police custody, Lieutenant-Colonel Purohit said: “On November 5, I was taken to a safe house in Khandala. There the ATS conducted sustained interrogation for four or five days. My physical torture began from November 6.”
He said Army officer Colonel Shrivastav had accompanied him to Khandala. Colonel Shrivastav was also questioned, he alleged.
Lieutenant-Colonel Purohit told Additional Judge Y.D. Shinde: “I was beaten very badly. My legs were spread 180 degrees. I was not able to walk. My wrists were also tied to a pole. As a result, I cannot use the fingers of my right hand and there is no sensation in my hand from the wrist upwards. ATS officers told me that they would plant RDX in my houses in Pune and Pachmarhi. I was interrogated by the Haryana, Gujarat, Rajasthan and Andhra Pradesh police and the CBI.
“The Haryana police and the CBI threatened me with an encounter. The ATS has threatened me in a similar manner a number of times. Their officers used obscene language about my mother and questioned my paternity. Moreover, they threatened that my wife and sister would be paraded naked and raped. I am confident that I am not going to get a fair treatment from the ATS.”
The other suspects also made similar allegations of ill-treatment amounting to violation of human rights. While sadhvi Pragnya had already submitted an affidavit in the Nashik court, on Monday she described her experience, adding that she was hung naked upside down and beaten up.
Public prosecutor Rohini Salian told the court that the ATS denied the allegations ‘in toto.’
Corrections and Clarifications
The penultimate paragraph in a report "I was tortured, says Purohit" (November 25, 2008) was "The other suspects also made similar allegations of ill-treatment amounting to violation of human rights. While sadhvi Pragnya had already submitted an affidavit in the Nashik court, on Monday she described her experience, adding that she was hung naked upside down and beaten up." The Correspondent clarifies: "Pragnya was not hung upside down. She alleged that ATS officers threatened her that she would be hung upside down naked and beaten. The act was not actually committed. It was a threat.
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