HC orders probe into man's suicide after police harassment

The Bombay High Court today directed the Crime Branch, Thane, to probe the suicide of a 22-year-old man who was allegedly harassed by local police before his death.
Thane resident Pushpa Jagtap complained that her son Mitesh was harassed by the officials of Titwala police station in Thane and forced him to commit suicide.
A bench of Justices B R Gavai and B P Colabawalla also directed the Crime Branch to submit a progress report on their probe after six weeks.
The directions came after the Thane Police informed the court that it had registered an FIR against the accused police personnel.

The Thane Police also told the court that it will soon record the statements of the complainants, the deceased's parents.
It said the Superintendent of Police, Thane (Rural), had also given an undertaking stating that he would personally supervise the local police's probe into the FIR.

The bench, however, noted that since personnel belonging to the Thane Police were accused in the case, it would not be appropriate for the same department to inquire into the incident.
The bench also noted that while the incident had taken place in August 2017 and the parents of the deceased had approached the police several times, the Thane Police had registered an FIR only on January 16 this year, following the court's intervention.

"Why should those officers who refused to register an FIR for all these months not be suspended?" the bench asked.
The bench was hearing a plea filed by Thane resident Pushpa Jagtap.
As per her plea, her son Mitesh was arrested in August last year on the charges of his involvement in a case of bike theft and even though he had not committed the crime, the police kept him in custody overnight and beat and abused him.
She said that finding no evidence, the police released her son but refused to give back his mobile phone.
"They threatened to incriminate him in other cases, and asked us for money in return for the phone. When my son told them he didn't want his phone back since we had no money to give, they threatened they would ensure that I was publicly shamed," Jagtap said in his plea.

"My son couldn't bear this humiliation and constant harassment at the hands of the police and hanged himself," she said.
She had sought that the concerned officials be booked for having abetted her son's suicide.