Shutdown in Kerala today over ‘police brutality’

Kerala’s Congress-led opposition United Democratic Front (UDF) has called a statewide shutdown today to protest the police assault on a woman.
Mahija, mother of Jishnu Prannoy, an engineering student found dead in his hostel room attached to his college three months ago, had yesterday gone to the police headquarters to demand the arrest of those responsible.
Television channels broadcast footage of the police arresting and dragging her into their vehicle along with her husband, brother, two of her son’s friends and four activists including K M Shahjahan, former secretary of veteran communist leader V S Achuthanandan.
Mahija alleged that the police hit her in the stomach and used abusive words, which triggered widespread outrage with many calling the television channels and taking to the social media to register their protest.
“The shutdown is against the inhuman and undemocratic attitude,” Congress party secretary Thampanoor Ravi said in a statement. “The protests should be peaceful. We have exempted essential services and (religious) festivals.”
Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) also called for a daylong shutdown today. Both parties have exempted Malappuram from the shutdown given the April 12 parliamentary by-poll there.
The UDF also boycotted the jubilee celebrations of the Kerala government.
Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan later clarified that police chief Loknath Behera had been willing to meet Mahija, but activists who were present there had created a law-and-order situation. Vijayan justified the police action.
“An investigation by an inspector general is underway, and I will take a decision on its basis,” the chief minister said adding he was not planning to visit Mahija who was hospitalised after the arrest.
“There were activists of the BJP, the SUCI (Socialist Unity Centre of India) and also somebody known as Thokku Swami (gun saint) who tried to barge into the police headquarters The police were only discharging their duty,” Vijayan said.
However, former chief minister Achuthanandan lashed out at Behera and wondered why the police were arresting the petitioners instead of the accused.
Former chief ministers A K Antony and Oommen Chandy too condemned the police action. Chandy who termed the incident “shameful” also led a protest march in Malappuram town where he was campaigning for the opposition candidate.
Antony described the incident as a black day and asked the government to call off its jubilee celebrations “if they had any sense of propriety”. He asked Vijayan to apologise to Jishnu’s mother.
“Only those who have lost all human qualities will behave like this. They don’t deserve any mercy and should be strictly punished,” he told reporters in New Delhi, asking ‘all who have a sense of justice’ to join the shutdown today.
Leader of the opposition in the Kerala Assembly, Ramesh Chennithala, said he was “pained” at the government’s failure to sympathise with the plight of a mother who had lost her only child.