UP cops torture mentally challenged youth

On a day when the Indian Air Force conducted flypasts across the country to honour health workers and others, including the police, who were battling the coronavirus, a video, showing brutal torture of a mentally challenged youth by two Uttar Pradesh cops, went viral on the social media. This left the UP government red faced.

The video shows the two cops kicking the youth, identified as Sunil Yadav, a resident of Bibamau village in UP's Etawah district, about 250 kilometres from Lucknow, in the face and also crushing his face under their boots.

One of the cops was later suspended and a probe was ordered into the incident, a senior police official, who termed the torture as 'light force', said on Sunday.

According to reports, the cops had gone to the village upon receiving a complaint that Sunil had assaulted some residents. The cops claimed that, when confronted, Sunil, who they said was a ''drug addict'', attacked them with knife.

''We had to use light force to neutralise the threat,'' the official said quoting the two cops. The video, however, tells a different story.

The mentally challenged youth could be seen begging for mercy as the cops kicked him, crushed his face with their boots and beat him with a lathi.

In another incident, the cops in the same district ordered a mentally challenged youth, who was found to be violating the lockdown, to treat them with a dance performance on a popular desi number. A police outpost in-charge was suspended in this regard.