Punish the guilty

The alleged police brutality and the eventual death of a father and his son in judicial custody, in Tamil Nadu is being paralleled with the US killing of George Floyd by a white police officer. I feel there is a vast difference between the two (“Bollywood strongly condemns father-son’s custodial death in Tamil Nadu,” June 27, Gulf Today).

The Floyd death is being attributed to racism. But the reasons, behind police high-handedness in India and for men in uniform becoming perpetrators of heinous cruelty and death, are plenty.

The trauma which Jayaraj and Benicks are believed to have gone through in custody is despicable. In fact until now the bits and pieces of the ordeal which have surfaced are so brutally chilling, that we can only imagine the extent of the cruelty inflicted on them.

In that respect I feel the US killing pales in comparison to the torture in the police station in TN. The duo were detained on June 19 and they died in custody three days later. Floyd was pinned to the floor for 8 minutes and 46 seconds and it was that gruesome. Will we ever know how long the hapless shopkeeper and his son were not only pinned down and assaulted but what really happened in that cell? Floyd’s evidence is in black and white. The TN episode has no witnesses, but the cry for justice is deafening.

Aaron Andre — By email