Close on heels of a death in police custody in Bijnor, yet another custodial death was reported from Sitapur where a youth died a day after being detained at Misrikh police station for questioning.
The wife of the deceased accused the police of brutal assault and torture leading to her husband's death. So far, senior officers have taken no action in this connection, saying that the matter is being probed.
They also said that the victim was injured after being assaulted by local residents.
As per reports, Itwari Gupta of Mishrikh was picked up and brought to Misrikh police station for questioning on Saturday evening, after another local, Tyagi Baba, filed a complaint against him. During quizzing, Gupta was brutally beaten up in the police station and after about an hour, the police took him on a jeep and left him in a serious condition at the gate of Rajeshwari Kanya Inter College.
On being informed, his wife Roopa rushed to the spot with other villagers and they took Itwari Gupta to the district hospital where the doctors referred him to KGMU Trauma Centre in Lucknow. But Gupta died on way to Lucknow on Sunday.
Roopa later filed a complaint with the superintendent of police of Sitapur, claiming that her husband told her about the police excesses before succumbing to his injuries.
A mother of four, Roopa threatened that she would not perform the last rites of her husband until the guilty cops were punished.
The police claimed that Gupta had a dispute with local residents identified as Prakash, Nemchand and Dharmadas and others and the accused had beaten him on Saturday as a result of which he died.
ASP (North) NP Singh said that a case was already registered against these accused and efforts were being made to nab them.
Two days back, in Najibabad of Bijnor, a 32-year-old man, Sunil Prajapati, had died in police custody after being accused of theft. Prajapati was arrested for stealing sacks of wheat from the house of village pradhan Pradeep Kumar on Friday and his family alleged that he was tortured by the police.
SP of Bijnor, Dharamveer Singh, claimed that Prajapati was in an inebriated state and died due to excess intake of intoxicating pills.
"Kumar called the cops and handed over Sunil who was inebriated. We recovered 70 'intoxicating' pills from his person and took him to the police station where his condition started deteriorating on Saturday. He was taken to a private hospital, where he later died. A post-mortem report of the deceased revealed the cause of death as a heart attack. We contacted the man's kin, who told cops that Sunil had been missing for the past six days," the SP said.