50 years of Emergency: When a prisoner was made to ‘run like a horse' at Madras Central Jail
According to testimonies, prison staff seemed to take pleasure in humiliating detainees. 'When one of them returned after a visit to Bangalore, he was made to run like a horse while being beaten,' recounted K. Vezhavendan, a former DMK Minister who later founded the Makkal DMK. He also alleged that the staff used 'disrespectful language.'
'Even refused water'
'Mr. Vezhavendan said they were not even given a bedsheet or mat. They were not given water to drink when they wanted. They were in the lock-up for 24 hours for nine days after their imprisonment till the DIG visited them. On February 2, 1976 night, he was shocked to hear shrieks and cries from other cells and the prisoners asking the staff not to beat them...The next day, the doctor, on his routine check-up, saw his condition, but he (Vezhavendan) was afraid of complaining. He was warned not to, lest more cruelty be unleashed on them. The inmates did not have a change of clothes for about eight days,' reported The Hindu on the Commission proceedings.
Vezhavendan said one prisoner was so desperate he contemplated suicide. After his release, Jail Superintendent K. Vidyasagar and his father K. Kolandaivelu, a former Deputy Commissioner of Police, met him in May 1977, asking him to 'forget the incidents and forgive them.' [Vidyasagar, however, told the Commission it was Vezhavendan who had visited him at his home.]
Dravidar Kazhagam general secretary (now president) K. Veeramani, in his deposition, told the Commission that the jail warders ignored his plea not to assault V.S. Sambandam, who had recently undergone spinal surgery. 'I warned them it might kill him,' Mr Veeramani said. Sambandam confirmed he collapsed after being struck. But the warders showed no sympathy, allegedly telling him to 'stop pretending' and get up.
Senior DMK leader Arcot N. Veeraswami, arrested on February 1, 1976 — a day after the DMK government was dismissed — said detainees were subjected to 'indecent and demeaning' language by staff. Seven inmates were packed into one cell, beaten, and denied drinking water or basic amenities for days. 'New arrivals were beaten... were allowed to bathe and change clothes only on February 9,' he deposed.
According to The Hindu Archives, Mr. Veeraswami added that on one occasion, a large amount of salt was deliberately mixed in the soup. 'On another occasion, sand was sprinkled on the food. Once the orderlies who used to help them in the kitchen were suddenly removed and replaced by four others, one of whom used to do scavenging work. Another had scabies and eczema on his hand, and the third suffered from a skin disease. The detenus protested and did not take tea in the morning. After representations, the original batch of orderlies was sent to the work. The Superintendent warned them that it was an offence to refuse food and they were liable to be punished.'
Allegations denied
However, the jail staff's counsel denied the allegations, calling the salt-in-soup claim 'imaginary.' He accused the prisoners of spreading propaganda for political purposes. The counsel also alleged that it was Mr. Veeraswami who had shared 'valuable information' to the superintendent to secure favourable treatment and release — a charge echoed by Vidyasagar.
(Assistance for overcoming suicidal thoughts is available on the State's health helpline 104, Tele-MANAS 14416. and Sneha's suicide prevention helpline 044-24640050)
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Time of India
23 minutes ago
- Time of India
New NMC chief vows to boost regulatory mechanism amid graft charges in medical college inspections
New Delhi: Against the backdrop of allegations of corruption in the inspection of medical colleges, newly appointed National Medical Commission (NMC) chief Dr Abhijat Sheth said the apex body would conduct a root cause analysis of the assessment system to weed out any probable shortcomings and strengthen the regulatory mechanism to prevent such lapses in future. In an exclusive interview with PTI, Dr Sheth acknowledged that such allegations are a serious concern for the NMC, and he, along with his team, reviewed the overall processes and the problems immediately after joining the Commission as its chief. Dr Sheth, who also heads the National Board of Examinations in Medical Sciences (NBEMS), was appointed as chairperson of the NMC in July. He took charge on August 5. In July, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) busted a network of officials of the Union Health Ministry, NMC, intermediaries and representatives of private medical colleges allegedly involved in a litany of "egregious" acts, including corruption and unlawful manipulation of the regulatory framework governing medical colleges. The agency has named 34 people in an FIR, including eight Health Ministry officials, a National Health Authority official and five doctors who were part of the NMC inspection team. Dr B N Gangadhar was the NMC chairperson then. In an immediate response to the FIR, the Commission initiated action, blacklisting four assessors and stopping the renewal of the existing undergraduate (UG) and postgraduate (PG) seats in six medical colleges. Dr Gangadhar resigned last October, citing health reasons. However, he continued to work in the position as his resignation was not accepted for want of a suitable candidate for the post. In his interview with PTI, Dr Sheth pointed out that the allegations of bribery were against a handful of staffers and officials, and considering the pan-India operations of the NMC, it would be unfair to put the whole organisation in the dock. "We take this as a serious concern and NMC has already adopted a zero tolerance policy against corruption, and they have taken immediate steps to regulate the people and institutions which are alleged in this issue, and appropriate action has been taken against them," Dr Sheth said. On how the assessment process can be improved, Dr Sheth said even before he joined, the NMC had already introduced some of the systems to do away with the physical dependency of inspection, which include institutionalisation of self assessment reports, deployment of central control and command centre for NMC inspections via CCTV surveillance and Aadhaar Enabled Bio-metric Attendance System (AEBAS) to monitor the faculty and the hospital staff. The NMC Act provides enough provisions to ensure that any deviation from the standard of practice will be taken seriously and appropriate regulatory or penal action will be taken to ensure that maximum compliance has been achieved, he said. "What we are going to do now, after my joining with our team is going to have a detailed root cause analysis of the problem, and based on the problem, we will find out shortcomings, any area for the improvements, and at the same time, we will ensure that one -- the regulatory mechanism has to be strengthened based on our root cause analysis, and also we need to take adequate steps to ensure the further prevention of such alleged incidences," he said. Regarding how the NMC will operate with the posts of presidents and members on various Boards like the UG Medical Education Board and Ethics and Medical Registration Board being still vacant, Dr Sheth said, "As far as I know, the posts of president of the UG Board and Ethics and Medical Registration Board are vacant. Also, the posts of members and part-time members are vacant. Filling of these posts is in process." "Until then, we have the president of the Post-Graduate Medical Education Board, Medical Assessment and Rating Board (MARB) and myself, as well as a very strong admin team in place. Since these responsibilities have been entrusted to me, we will ensure that the operations do not suffer and the necessary reforms are initiated. We are expecting that all other posts will be filled up and the processes will get streamlined in the next couple of months," he added.
Scroll.in
36 minutes ago
- Scroll.in
Podcast: Indira Gandhi's disastrous legacy that defined Indian democracy
Fifty years ago, India was in the early throes of the Emergency, declared by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi on June 25, 1975. A thoroughly Orwellian moment by any standard, the Emergency – the suspension of democracy – was justified by Gandhi as the only way to save democracy. It was both deadly and farcical: as prisons filled to their cyclone-wire-topped brims with opposition politicians and the state inflicted brutal violence on dissenting forces, Gandhi's government ensured that even parliamentary discussion of censorship was censored. The Emergency constitutes only one part of Srinath Raghavan's definitive work on India's only female prime minister, Indira Gandhi and the Years that Transformed India. As Raghavan discusses in this episode of Past Imperfect, this authoritarian interlude was the product of broader trends: Gandhi's inexorable concentration of executive power and the dismantling of political norms. The prime minister hardly acted alone in these processes. As Raghavan makes it clear, it is possible to understand events like the Emergency only by taking into account the unscrupulous, self-serving, and flagrantly illegal actions of a whole host of political actors, both in the Congress Party and in the opposition. When democracy died in India, it died from a thousand cuts, many inflicted by its avowed supporters and sworn protectors. Was Gandhi a populist, an authoritarian, or something else? Raghavan invites us to see her regime as Caesarist, a mode of politics where a leader concentrates power by trying to forge a direct connection with the people, trampling over the norms and niceties of parliamentary democracy. She was no committed democrat: writing to the violinist Yehudi Menuhin, Gandhi stated, 'Democracy is not an end. It is merely a system by which one proceeds towards the goal' (her words are eerily similar to those offered by a modern-day autocrat, Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, who once quipped that democracy was a tram which one disembarked after reaching one's destination). Nor can she be classified as a socialist. While she certainly sympathised with the poor, Gandhi's policies, like the nationalisation of banks and industries, had much more to do with interparty struggles in the Congress. She could be thuggishly brutal against organised labour. Gandhi was a force to reckon with, but she was also a product of her times. Raghavan portrays her as the central character in India's long 1970s, a period of voluble economic and political crises – and one which was joined at the hip to global events. Gandhi adopted Caesarism as a way to confront the diminishing hegemony of the Congress Party and the fast-accelerating competitiveness of Indian democracy. International crises, like the two oil shocks of the 1970s, shaped her economic policies. Raghavan's analysis of those economic policies is particularly innovative. Gandhi began her prime ministership with a stillborn policy of liberalisation, switching tracks to full-throated socialist rhetoric and the tightening of regulatory infrastructure. But the sheer economic malaise of the early 1970s, spiraling inflation, and the disastrous results of certain nationalisation projects – like that of the wheat trade – gave her pause. Gandhi let her economic advisors, including Manmohan Singh, carefully dial back regulation and tackle inflation. Others, like BK Nehru, pointedly asked her if the Indian government's quest for social justice had simply resulted in 'equality in poverty.' By the end of her life, she warmed up to industrialists like Dhirubhai Ambani. While cautioning that Gandhi was hardly a neoliberal, Raghavan does see her prime ministership as an important precursor to India's tryst with economic liberalisation. Gandhi's political legacy was far darker. From an early age, when she served as president of the Congress Party, she displayed 'disregard bordering on disdain for the rules and norms of parliamentary government'. Once she became prime minister, she helped scatter those rules and norms like so many leaves in the wind. She had no qualms about discarding established precedents, turbo-charging briefcase politics, and intimidating rivals. This was most apparent in her long-running feud with the judiciary, which she perceived as the biggest obstacle towards her consolidation of executive authority. With Gandhi's approval, lackeys suborned judges and unhesitatingly committed perjury. Gandhi, meanwhile, darkly hinted of a 'foreign hand' at work amongst those who opposed her, either through the courts or the ballot box. When the Allahabad High Court invalidated her election in June 1975, Gandhi's fear and paranoia compelled her to completely dispense with rules, norms, and democracy itself. Even before declaring the Emergency, she began planning to round up and imprison opposition leaders. The president, Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed, coolly signed off on Gandhi's ordinance for the Emergency without written approval from the cabinet, as required by the Constitution. It was a fitting prelude to a period of lawlessness, violent coercion, and executive overreach. During the Emergency, Gandhi toyed with the idea of a presidential system for India, one modeled on Charles de Gaulle's Fifth Republic in France. Congress sycophants went further: one advocated doing away with 'all this election nonsense' and simply appointing Gandhi 'President for life'. After the Emergency was lifted, opposition leaders eventually mounted a successful rout of the Congress under the banner of the Janata Party. Raghavan highlights the divisions and delusions of Janata leaders, factors which eventually enabled Gandhi's comeback. Jayaprakash Narayan was hardly alone in expressing disillusion with democracy and a striking disregard for elected legislative bodies. As the JP Movement grew, he deceived himself into believing that Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and Jana Sangh allies had shed their communalist and majoritarian instincts. Under the fragile Janata tent, secular forces mostly kept their misgivings against the Sangh under wraps; when those misgivings burst into the open, they helped hammer the final nails into the coffin of India's first non-Congress government. Indira Gandhi's last term in power was marked by disastrous policy in Assam, Kashmir, and Punjab and her violent end on the lawns of 1 Safdarjung Road. Raghavan's book makes for sobering reading. Written in a measured and thoroughly even-handed way, it nevertheless pronounces a severe verdict on a prime minister who, today, remains wildly popular and revered in some quarters. Moreover, Raghavan points to how the short-sightedness, personal ambitions, and blind loyalties of so many other leaders accelerated the breakdown of political norms in the long 1970s – and the rise of new political forces. Janata leaders like Morarji Desai, Charan Singh, and Jagjivan Ram exhibited 'the grotesque ambition of elderly men who saw a belated opportunity to shin up the greasy pole'. Shielded by Jayaprakash Narayan, the Jana Sangh, the predecessor of the BJP, skillfully widened its pan-Indian appeal and helped bring majoritarian politics in from the cold. In this podcast episode, Raghavan turns to one of the concluding lines of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet to sum up this collective disfigurement of Indian democracy: 'All are punished.' Indira Gandhi and the Years that Transformed India is part of a broader crop of recent books on democratic crises around the world, past and present. Raghavan is careful to note dissimilarities between the long 1970s and post-2014 India. Nevertheless, his book is essential reading for all Indians who worry about the health of Indian democracy today. Dinyar Patel is an associate professor of history at the SP Jain Institute of Management and Research in Mumbai. His award-winning biography of Dadabhai Naoroji, Naoroji: Pioneer of Indian Nationalism, was published by Harvard University Press in May 2020.
New Indian Express
2 hours ago
- New Indian Express
K Chandrasekhar Rao, Harish ask Telangana HC to suspend report on KLIS
HYDERABAD: Former chief minister K Chandrasekhar Rao and former irrigation minister T Harish Rao have filed separate petitions in the Telangana High Court seeking suspension of the report submitted by the PC Ghose Commission of Inquiry on the Kaleshwaram Lift Irrigation Scheme. The two leaders urged the court to restrain the state government from acting on or implementing the report, which was submitted on July 31, 2025, by the Commission. The Congress government had set up the Commission to examine alleged negligence, irregularities and lapses in the planning, design and construction of the Medigadda, Annaram, and Sundilla barrages, which form part of the Kaleshwaram Project. The Commission was also directed to identify responsibility for the alleged lapses. In their petitions, KCR and Harish said the report contained adverse findings against them and was released to the public through a press conference and PowerPoint presentation on August 4, 2025, without giving them notice as required under the Commissions of Inquiry Act, 1952. They further alleged that the government had repeatedly publicised the report without supplying them a copy.
