Amherst Street custodial death: Calcutta HC directs preservation of CCTV footage of police station

Kolkata, Nov 17 (IANS) A division bench of the Calcutta High Court on Friday directed the Kolkata Police Commissioner to preserve the video footage of Amherst Street Police Station in central Kolkata, where a person allegedly died after being beaten up by the cops.

The division bench of Chief Justice T.S. Sivagnanam and Justice Hiranmay Bhattacharya gave this direction while hearing on PIL in the matter.

The division bench has given a clear direction to the city police commissioner to ensure that the CCTV footage should be preserved either in any compact disc or any other storage device so that it is not destroyed or damaged at any cost. The division bench clearly ordered that the responsibility will be entirely on the police if the CCTV footage is destroyed or damaged.

However, the division bench is yet to respond to the appeal for a second time post-mortem of the victim’s body at any central hospital like AIIMS in Kalyani in Nadia district or the defense-run Command Hospital in South Kolkata.

The division bench said that first the family members of the victim should be made a party in the PIL and after hearing their views only the matter of second-time post mortem might be considered.

The division bench also directed the police to immediately shift the body of the victim from the Police Morgue to the morgue of the state-run S.S.K.M. Medical College & Hospital for the safe preservation of the body.

Meanwhile, the first post-mortem was conducted at the Police Morgue on Thursday evening. As per the post-mortem reports there is no existence of a wound on the body of the victim and the cause of his death is internal hemorrhage. The post-mortem report corroborates the statements of the cops of Amherst Street police station that the victim was not even touched within the police station premises and he had fallen sick during the course of questioning.

State BJP leadership has, however, termed the post-mortem report from Police Morgue as totally fabricated to save the skin of the guilty cops. BJP councilor in Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) Sajal Ghosh has claimed that the truth will surface only after the autopsy is conducted at any central hospital.

–IANS

src/dpb