Hyderabad: The Telangana High Court on Tuesday issued notice and sought the responses of the Chief Secretary, principal secretary for home, DGP and the Medak superintendent of police in a suo motu writ petition on the alleged custodial death of Khadeer Khan in Medak earlier this month.
A division bench of Chief Justice Ujjal Bhuyan and Justice N. Tukaramji on Tuesday directed the officials to file their replies by March 14. The court had taken up the petition suo motu based on newspapers reports.
J. Ramchandra Rao, additional advocate-general, representing the state government and police said that Khadeer Khan had died 14 days after he was produced before the executive magistrate.
The Chief Justice made it clear that the court wanted to pursue the issue and reminded him of the D.K. Basu case, through which the Supreme Court has framed guidelines regarding detention, arrest, custody of accused and informing those known to the arrested person. Chief Justice Bhuyan said the court wanted to examine whether or not the police had followed the procedure in taking custody of Khadeer Khan.
Khadeer Khan was detained on January 29 in a case of chain-snatching in Medak and kept behind bars for five days and allegedly beaten up. On February 3, the police handed him over to his wife Siddeshwari after making her sign a bind-over order by the Medak tahsildar.
It was alleged that the beating had damaged Khadeer Khan’s kidneys, and the police had him admitted at a the private hospital and reportedly paid the bill. He was then shifted to the Gandhi Hospital, where he died.
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