“Youth dies in police custody! Over, 100 killed in police custody in Maharashtra in four years“ Times of India, Oct 30th

“Just give me my son! Place him across my lap. Open your eyes child, did you close them, so you wouldn’t see the next blow and the next? What scars are these against my baby’s skin? What stains of blood?Deep gashes, caused by policeman’s brutal belt?Same skin I nursed and bathed and washed, is now the colour of a bloodied river!”

“You my son, who ran and played, with me keeping a watchful eye, lest you fall and graze a knee or shin or toe, who would come running to me, even if there was a trickle of blood on same skin, and I would wrap you in my arms and run to the doctor, as if some great injury had befallen you, but to me even a graze on your tender body, was grievous wound enough. But this….

“These rivers of blood, inflicted by a government belt? Will that same doctor, who used to laugh as I came running to his clinic holding you in my frenzied arms, now laugh?”

“Doctor, where are you?”

“Can you put that ointment you used to paste on him, more to assuage my feelings, then that of my little boy, who, all he wanted was to go back and play, and get hurt again..”

“Son! Wake up, your friends are calling, they want you to come out and play. They say, they won’t let you fall and get hurt!”

“Who let you fall, and get hurt my son? I know what those eyes behind those closed eyelids are saying, “You told me to go to the law ma when I was in trouble! I went mummy and the law did this to me!”

“I know my son, I know we taught you those men in khaki could be trusted, and I know I betrayed you in letting you go to them! You were no criminal! You were no thief or robber! You went as a citizen of this country, to settle a problem, and they sent you out lifeless, a dead body!”

“Dead?”

“Don’t take him from my arms! One last run with him to the doctor, and that ointment will wake him up! Let him be in these old, wrinkled arms, they are the only ones that ever protected him! Why did I let him stray from them? Why did I not pick him up from those khaki butchers and escape from the very men who should have protected him?”

“Oh my son, my son, let’s go home, and I’ll teach you the rules again, “Do not trust men in khaki! They and their masters are criminals of the state!”

“Doctor put that ointment will you, he wants to go out and play..!” 

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