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Gujarat custody deaths

Three officers from the Mundra police station, who had been on the run since two deaths in custody in January this year, were arrested and sent to remand for nine days on Saturday. According to the police, the officers are the main defendants in the deaths in custody of two casual workers from Samghogha village in Mundra taluka of Kutch district. The two workers, Arjan Gadhvi (27) and Hajog Gadhvi (26), were arrested for a robbery at the house.

Kutch (west) police officers said Shaktisinh Gohil, Ashok Kannad, and Jaydevsinh Jhala were caught by a team from the Bhavnagar Local Crime Division (LCB) on Thursday morning and taken to Kutch on Friday. “The defendants were formally arrested on Friday. We presented them in a Mundra court on Saturday and with a request requesting their preventive detention for 14 days. However, the court awarded us custody of the defendants for nine days, ”Jayesh Panchal, Deputy Superintendent of Police (DySP) of the Bhuj Division of Kutch (West) Police, told The Indian Express on Saturday.

An LCB team raided the Meriton Hotel near Nari Chowkadi on the outskirts of the city of Bhavnagar on Thursday morning, police said. While Kannad and Jhala were captured in their hotel room, Gohil was picked up from his relative’s residence in Bhavnagar city minutes later, officials said.

“After the death of the two men, the three officers escaped and went into hiding in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Goa and Andhra Pradesh. However, they ran out of money and returned to Gujarat, ”said DySP Panchal, who is the investigating officer in the case of deaths in Mundra’s custody.

With the arrests of the three chiefs of police, the number of arrests in the case of deaths in Mundra custody has risen to 10. The police had previously arrested Mundra Police Inspector JA Padhiyar, local guards Viral Joshi and Shambu Ahir; officers Gafurji Thakor and Kapil Desai, civilian Narvirsinh Sarvaiya and a former sarpanch from Samaghogha village, Jayvirsinh Jadeja. Family victims have alleged that Arjan and Harjog were beaten to death by police officers at the urging of Jayvirsinh Jadeja due to a dispute over the land.

The trio’s arrests come exactly one week after a local court in Mundra declared them criminals on March 19. After they were registered in the case of deaths in custody on January 20 of this year, the three officers were suspended from service.

According to an FIR registered at the Mundra Police Station on January 20, the police had detained Arjan, Harjog, and Shamla Gadhvi as suspects in a burglary incident in the village of Samaghogha.

According to the police, the accused policemen and the former Samghogha sarpanch allegedly held the three men in illegal confinement and physically tortured them, resulting in the death of Arjan on 19 January. In his complaint, Arjan’s relative, Devraj Gadhvi, named the three police chiefs as defendants. . The trio was booked for the murder and illegal confinement of the three men from Samaghogha. Harjog had succumbed to the injuries while receiving treatment at a hospital in Ahmedabad on February 6, while Shamla has since recovered.