Tamil Nadu custodial deaths: Role of Friends of Police under scanner
(WorldNews India)

THE INVESTIGATION into the custodial deaths last month of a father and son in Tamil Nadu’s Thoothukudi has brought under the scanner a 27-year-old community policing initiative in the state, Friends of Police (FOP), with demands to dismantle the system that is “widely misused”, especially in small towns and rural areas. The probe by the state’s Crime Branch-CID into the deaths of shopkeeper P Jeyaraj and his son J Bennix in Sathankulam police station on the night of June 19 has zeroed in on the alleged role of six FOP members who had been “helping the Inspector and Sub-Inspectors in routine affairs”. “We suspect that all six of them had a role in the custodial torture that...