“The attitude of the police officers towards the general public is getting worse day by day. Those who choose to serve the people at the police academy should be assured that they are most humane and intelligent before sending them out to society,” read the home page of the Kerala Police Academy’s website on Wednesday evening. The site was hacked by the Kerala Cyber Warriors, to slam the Kerala police for its insensitive attitude towards the son of the couple, who were accidentally immolated during the eviction from their house in Thiruvananthapuram’s Neyyattinkara on December 22.
The hacked page contained a posterised image of a moving scene from a video that went viral following the incident. The couple’s 17-year-old son, Renjith, was trying to dig a grave for his father, even while tearfully arguing with the police around him, to let him bury his father in peace. In the poster, Renjith can be seen pointing his finger at a police officer and asking, “Now only my mom is left to die, Sir.” To this, a police officer responded, “What should I do for that?”
“Let the pointed finger be the key to a new change. Dismiss the criminals in ‘khaki’ and clean up the police force,” wrote the hackers. Kerala Cyber Warriors hit out against the police officer who spoke insensitively to the desperate child, who was digging the grave for his father’s burial, all alone.
Officials in the Kerala Police headquarters confirmed that the website of Kerala Police Academy was hacked. Though the poster was immediately removed from the site, measures are still on to restore the site.
In the viral video, the 17-year-old boy could be seen digging a grave with a shovel. The police officers standing around him were seen asking him to stop digging, albeit in an insensitive manner. “Eda, nirtheda,” the police officer can be heard saying in Malayalam, asking him to stop. To this, the boy replied, “Again… only my mother is left to die; you all killed my father.”
Read ground report: ‘It was the police who killed them’: Son of Kerala couple who succumbed to burns
The viral video evoked severe criticisms against the police, for behaving in a brute and insensitive manner to the child, who witnessed his parents being accidentally immolated, in front of him and his brother. The two children lost his father. Hours after the video was shot, their grievously injured mother, too, passed away.
Watch video of the incident
It was on December 22 that 46-year-old Rajan and 40-year-old Ambili was accidentally immolated while they were trying to oppose the police officials who had come to evict the family. In an attempt to back off the police, Rajan poured petrol on him and his wife. He lit a lighter to keep away the police. However, without exercising caution, an officer walked towards him, in an attempt to remove the lighter from his hand. But unfortunately, Rajan and Ambili caught fire. While Rajan died on Sunday, Ambili succumbed to her injuries on Monday evening.
Before succumbing to injuries, Rajan had recorded a video, stating that he had only done so to oppose the police and had not planned to take his own life. Following his death, his two sons also blamed the police for the accident that led to their parents’ death.
Police officials have been widely criticised for showing the urgency in evicting the family, who had managed to secure a stay from the Kerala High Court, albeit almost 20 minutes after the couple got immolated. Although Rajan had hinted about the petition, the police ignored it.