I haven't seen this reach any international audience yet, so here goes. All cops are bastards, right? This includes cops that aren't american.
Trigger warning: the following contains descriptions of police brutality and sexual assault.
Jayaraj and Fenix, father and son, mobile shop owners in the small town of Thoothukudi (Tuticorin) in Tamil Nadu, south India, had kept their shops open 15 minutes past the 8:00 pm curfew on Friday, June 19th and were taken in by local police on Saturday, June 20th. On Monday, Fenix allegedly complained of chest pain, while Jayaraj had a high fever. Fenix died on Monday evening, and Jayaraj died due to respiratory complications early Tuesday.
That sounds like your run of the mill police brutality story right? Indians are used to lathi wielding cops beating up beggars on the streets for small misdemeanors. We're used to seeing cops made fun of in mainstream bollywood movies, we're used to seeing the muscley hero tied up in a dingy jail cell, being beaten by cops over and over again until he gives them what he wants. No one takes the police seriously in India, which means no one takes police brutality seriously. And that's a problem.
Here's what really happened with Jeyaraj and Fenix.
They were horrifically tortured. Fenix's lawyer was present when they were in custody. Both the father and the son were brutally beaten, Fenix so badly that his flesh ripped off, and the place where they were beaten was covered in their blood. Steel tipped lathis were used to sodomize them, and they were both bleeding from their rectums, so profusely that they had to change their clothes at least 7 times throughout the day. When they were taken to the hospital, a doctor declared them fit, despite their injuries, at the insistence of the local inspector.
When they went to the judicial magistrate to file a complaint, repeated threats from the police kept them from being able to tell the truth.
And finally, as you know, on Monday and Tuesday, they both died. They lost their lives, and their families lost two breadwinners at the hands of police brutality. It is not enough for the police responsible to be charged with murder, the entire system needs to be broken down. Tamil Nadu is already protesting, but this issue needs more than that.
I will continue to update this with links and resources as I find them. Until then, here's how you can help:
1. Share this story, and make sure you are informed. You can read more about it here and here.
3. Get the hashtag #JusticeforJayarajandFenix trending on every social media account you have. It's high time the Indian police system realized that brutality cannot be commonplace, and India and the world will not stand for it any longer.
4. Talk about the casual portrayals of police brutality in mainstream bollywood and hollywood (remember the first few minutes of Slumdog Millionaire?) Talk about how Indians see cops as a joke, which makes it so easy to dismiss cases of police violence as just another cop being bad at their job. It's easy to point and laugh and dismiss, while the system uses this image to get away with horrific acts like this under the radar.
Say their names, remember their faces. Remember that police brutality is everyone's problem.
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