The police are not our friends

Writer: Nihira
Editor: Akanksha

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On 11th April, 2018, 23 year old Pradip Kute, and his wife (Sunita), mother (Sunanda), and a cousin (Bhimrao) were playing songs from a tape while on Pradip’s tractor. A family of sugarcane harvesters and labourers, the Kutes are from a village named Songiri that lies in Maharashtra’s Osmanabad district. They had travelled to Solapur district for the crushing season. As part of their contract, Pradip was driving the tractor they were transporting sugarcane with. At around 3:30 PM, as they were passing by a police station in Manegaon village, two local policemen- Dashrath Kumbhar and Deepak Kshirsagar, along with some other people stopped the tractor. They demanded to know why Pradip was playing songs so loudly. People who then became witnesses in the case reported that he was attacked “by kicks and fist blows as well as stick”. The policemen then dragged the 23 year old inside the police station. There, Dashrath Kumbhar and Deepak Kshirsagar murdered Pradip Kute.

This is known as custodial death. It is murder.

According to the court hearing, Pradip was unable “to walk on his own” as he had already fainted or was at least feeling faint by the time he was dragged inside the building. But this didn’t deter the physical assault. The postmortem report shows 43 wounds on his body. The official cause of death is listed as a “head injury with compression of neck with injury to both lungs”. The police likely smashed his head and strangled him. Because he was playing songs on a tape recorder. Because the police can do that.

Kumbhar and Kshirsagar are Head Constables. Not a high end position in the Indian Police Service. Below them are just two other posts, the Naik and the Constable. But violence isn’t the license of just the higher-ups that Bollywood’s actors play these days. The proceedings state that after taking Pradip inside the police station, the men continued their assaults. Then they dumped him in a car and rushed him to a nearby hospital. He was declared dead soon after.

Much has been written in India about custodial deaths and police brutality. Much has been written all over the world. How the police is a synonym for brutality. How custody of a person by the police can only ever result in death of some form. How the law can never limit the police- not because it fails to do so, but because laws are built to limit some and profit others. Better writers have made clear how both state and capital own violence of which the police and the law are subcontractors.

And when the police kill, they end one life and change countless others.

Sunanda and Pradip were married only four months before the murder. Sunanda passed away on 21st June, 2020. Her mother-in-law, Sunita Kute, was entirely dependent on their incomes. For Pradip, this uncertain calculation was made according to local minimum wage laws which amounted to Rs 6,000 a month. In January of this year, his mother was granted a sum of Rs 15,00,000 by the court of which she can use Rs 5,00,000 for now. The remaining 10 will be ‘invested’ in her name with her access limited to only the quarterly interest it generates. The state can only ever distribute money when the police murders. This isn’t a call to incarcerate the policemen. But to question why there is a ready-made mechanism of throwing money at people’s grief in place. How has it all come to a point where we accept putting a price on life?

That is the price of her son. And his wife. 15 lakhs. Plus interest. That is known as legal justice. It is a farce.

The point in raising Pradip’s case is not to make one that claims other reasons the police give for murder are permissible. It is to say the obvious: no matter what we do, they will murder. And smokescreens will shoot up to hide the blood. This note is an attempt to tear those down. To find ways and words to fight the screens and the sirens.