People committing suicide because of police excesses: SP

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Lucknow: SP chief Akhilesh Yadav on Wednesday said innocent people were dying due to police highhandedness .

"In exchange for feeding its political interests, BJP govt has let the state police loose and turned a blind eye to their excesses. During elections, the BJP uses the police to scare away voters supporting opposition parties. Everyone has seen videos on social media of police carrying firearms threatening voters to return home without polling their votes. BJP also uses the police to implicate opposition functionaries in false criminal cases," Akhilesh said.

"The result is cops have turned autocratic and allegations of fake encounters, involvement in robbery and extortion, are being levelled on them every day," Akhilesh said. He said things have come to a pass that police highhandedness coupled with absence of any mechanism to address complaints against the Khaki clad were prompting people to commit suicide.

"This is what has happened in Farrukhabad where a man, who was subjected to harassment in police custody, committed suicide shortly after returning home," Akhilesh claimed.

The SP chief also cited the recent Kanpur case where a livestock trader was chased by 11 policemen on patrol duty at different locations, thrashed and deprived of Rs 10,000.

"Allegations are that the victim was forced to cough up Rs 200 per police picket every time he passed through Kanpur, but this time he was asked to pay Rs 500 per cop because they had to chase and intercept him," he claimed.