Gujarat: Suspended Mundra police inspector, house guard arrested in custodial dying case

A suspended police inspector and a house guard have been arrested round every week after the dying of an agricultural labourer, a suspect in a theft case, within the custody of Mundra police in Kutch district at the same time as three head constables wished within the case are on the run, police stated Wednesday.
J A Padhiyar, the then police inspector of Mundra police station, and Viral Joshi, a house guard connected to the Mundra police station, have been formally arrested by Kutch (west) police Monday night. They have been produced in a neighborhood courtroom which has despatched them to police remand for 3 days, police stated.

Padhiyar, who suspended from responsibility in reference to the case on January 22, was the police inspector in-charge of the Mundra police station when three head constables — Shaktisinh Gohil, Jaydevsinh Jhala and Ashok Kannad — of the detection group of the police station had allegedly picked up Arjan Gadhvi (27), a resident of Samaghogha village in Kutch district’s Mundra taluka on January 12 as a suspect in a case of a home break-in registered at Mundra. Following an alleged brutal beating by the policemen, Gadhvi died in a hospital on January 19 night.
The accused policemen allegedly had additionally picked up two different males, Shamla Gadhvi and Harjog Gadhvi, residents of Samaghogha, on January 16 as suspects in the home break-in case and in addition beat them up.
According to the FIR, the three head constables had deserted Arjan’s physique on the Community Health Centre in Mundra and went underground at the same time as cops informed the sufferer’s household that he had died of a cardiac arrest. However, relations and leaders of Gadhvi group refused to assert the physique. After they submitted a criticism, the three head constables have been booked for homicide and Shamla and Harjog have been admitted to GK General Hospital for remedy for the alleged accidents attributable to the police beating.
Community leaders had accepted Arjan’s physique on January 22 after Saurabh Singh, Superintendent of Police, Kutch (west), assured to probe any position of police inspector Padhiyar within the homicide.
JN Panchal, the Deputy Superintendent of Police (DySP) of Bhuj division of Kutch (west) police, stated Padhiyar knew that his detection group had picked up the three males. “The detection team directly reports to the police inspector of a police station and, therefore, he is responsible for the acts of omissions and commissions by that team. In this case, Padhiyar was not only aware that the detection team had picked up the victims but had himself interrogated them. All this while, the victims were never shown as detained or arrested in police record and thus the accused kept the victims confined illegally,” Panchal informed The Indian Express.
The DySP stated house guard Joshi was additionally connected to the detection group and that eye-witnesses within the case have given statements to the impact that he, too, beat the victims. “There is no entry in the arrest register or in the lockup register of Mundra police station with respect to Arjan, Shamla and Harjog. The three were confined in the interrogation room of the detection team. This room is separate from the police station and witnesses have attested to the presence of the victims in that room,” Panchal, who’s investigating the custodial dying case, stated.

Asked if the police inspector was cooperating with the investigation, the DySP stated: “The Constitution has given him the right to not to say anything and, currently, he is exercising his right as, being a police officer, he knows the laws and rules. However, there is evidence against him and we are collecting more of it,” Panchal stated.
After the case of custodial dying was registered at Mundra police station, Padhiyar was transferred to Joint Interrogation Centre (JIC) in Bhuj and was suspended from service on January 22. Along with him, the three head constables accused within the custodial dying case have been additionally suspended.