BILASPUR: The Supreme Court has ordered a CBI inquiry and interim compensation of Rs 25 lakh for Lehra Bai, 35, whose husband died allegedly in police custody in Chhattisgarh's Bilaspur district nearly two years ago.
The court came down hard on the Chhattisgarh Director General of Police, Director General (Prisons) and Principal Secretary (Home) for their handling of the case, calling their actions "sacrilegious" and their claims "patently false and wholly reprehensible".
Lehra's husband, Shravan Suryavanshi Tamre, 34, was picked up by a team from Sipat police station outside his shop in Mohra village on January 18, 2024, and arrested under the Chhattisgarh Excise Act for allegedly possessing six litres of mahua liquor worth Rs 1,200.
Tamre's family was not allowed to meet him in custody. On the night of January 21, a villager informed them he had been taken to Chhattisgarh Institute of Medical Sciences Hospital in Bilaspur. His brother found him dead when he reached the hospital around 3 am on January 22; hospital records put his time of death at 6 am that day.
A medical report recorded no external injuries, but the postmortem listed the cause of death as cardio-respiratory arrest due to a head injury caused by blunt objects, along with a laceration on the scalp, multiple bruises and bleeding.
Lawyer Rajeev Kumar Dubey, who read about the case in a newspaper, offered to represent Lehra free of cost. He said repeated requests for CCTV footage from the police station, the Bilaspur SP and the Chhattisgarh DGP went unanswered, leading the family to approach the High Court in August 2024.
At its last hearing on October 13, the Supreme Court granted the CBI three more months to complete its investigation and posted the matter for further hearing on February 2, 2027.
Then Sipat police station in-charge inspector Naresh Chauhan told The Indian Express he checked CCTV footage and found nothing suspicious, and that Tamre's medical report before being produced in court was normal.
Lehra, who works as a farm hand and daily-wage labourer earning about Rs 300 a day, said she wants her two daughters, aged 13 and 11, to study. Tamre's father Amritlal has separately moved the Supreme Court seeking a share of the compensation, which the court has deferred until final relief is decided.