Madhya Pradesh Police Apologise for Beating Lawyer, ‘We Thought You Were Muslim,’

On March 23, a lawyer Deepak Bundele was beaten up brutally by the state police while he was on his way to a government hospital for treatment. A month later, he is under pressure from the police to withdraw his complaint. Police officials, in their defence, told Bundele that he was beaten up because they had wrongly identified him as a Muslim man.

Since then, he alleged, police have been trying really hard to get him to withdraw the complaint.… However, Bundele didn’t budge. In his March 24 complaint to the SP he requested the district police to file an FIR against the incident. On that basis, a few police officials came to his house on May 17 to record his version. This is when the police told him that this was a case of mistaken identity, and that the police officials thought he was a Muslim.

An FIR against this case has still not been registered, Bundele said. “I was struck by the way the police officials apologised. Even if I was a Muslim, what gives the police the right to assault them without any cause,” he said. The Wire sent a request to the Betul SP for a comment, but he has not replied.