'Student ends life after police torture'

Ritesh Pais (19), a hardware engineering student, had committed suicide by hanging himself at his house in Barebail after leaving a suicide note blaming police. Denis Walter Pais, father of Ritesh told Deccan Herald that his son had taken the extreme step as he could not endure the police torture and humiliation. Walter said that Ritesh had mentioned Urwa Police Sub Inspector Kiran, cops Shivappa Gowda and Devaiah as responsible persons for his death.

“They (police) raided my house for about five times and later they used filthy language against me and my son in the police station too. My son, who could not endure the mental agony, committed suicide,” Walter alleged.

Background

The whole episode started with an SMS carrying three words ‘keep in touch,’ which was sent to Ritesh’s sister Renita by one Shameem D’Souza, who is a friend of Ritesh.
Ritesh’s family wanted Shameem to apologise for sending SMS and a conciliation meeting was also held at the Parish in this regard.

Meanwhile, Shameem had filed a life threat complaint against Walter, Ritesh and his friend Sudeep at Urwa Police Station on August 28. Accordingly, police filed FIR under Sections 504, 506, 507, 384, 511 and 34 (criminal intimidation, extortion etc) against three persons. Police produced the accused before the court on September 1 and were released on bail on September 2.

The court had put a condition to produce the mobile phones of all the three accused at Urwa Police Station. Accordingly, Walter and Ritesh went to police station on September 8.

Walter alleged that the police treated them like criminals and scolded them using filthy language on September 8. “We were made to wait inside the police station till evening. They did not allow me to even inside the police station,” he said adding that the incident caused mental pain in Ritesh.

Ritesh, Walter and Sudeep had to appear before the court on September 14. Ritesh, who is the only son of Walter, had passed PUC with 85 per cent marks from St Aloysius College and joined for a hardware engineering course recently.

ASP to probe

SP Dr A S Rao told Deccan Herald that Additional SP Ramesh has been assigned to conduct inquiry into the issue of suicide note. Action will be taken based on the report, he added.

DH News Service