For Makhan Din’s family, his last video captures an unimaginable tragedy.
On February 5, 25-year-old Din died by suicide in a remote village of Jammu’s Kathua district – a day after he was detained and interrogated by the police. Minutes before he drank insecticide, he shot a video explaining that he was taking his life because he feared more police torture.
“I swear by Allah and his messenger that I have never seen militants,” Din, who worked as a labour contractor in Himachal Pradesh, said in the video. “I was forced to create a false story because I was subjected to brutal beating [in custody]...When I started lying that I had seen militants…only then did the beating stop.”
On February 4, Din and his father Mohammad Murid had been detained by the police from their house. “We were taken to Billawar police station where both of us were separated from each other,” recalled Murid, a farmer. “They first started torturing me and then I heard Makhan’s cries from some other room.”
While Murid was let go the next morning and asked to “not mention it to anyone”, Din reached home by the afternoon of February 5. “The cops had dropped him near a deserted spot some 6 km from his home and asked him to fetch his phone,” Murid added. “Since he was tortured for the whole night, he was afraid to go back. Therefore, he committed suicide.”
Din’s death coincided with a civilian killing in Kashmir Valley. On February 5, a 32-year-old truck driver in North Kashmir’s Baramulla district was shot dead by the army after he jumped a security checkpoint.
Two back-to-back civilian deaths in Jammu and Kashmir involving security forces was widely criticised by the ruling National Conference government as well as the Opposition parties in the union territory.
Jammu and Kashmir’s chief minister Omar Abdullah – who does not have jurisdiction over police – also raised the incident with the Centre.
Two Members of Parliament from Kashmir Valley – Aga Syed Ruhullah Mehdi and Engineer Rashid – demanded action against the security personnel responsible for the deaths in Baramulla and Kathua. Rashid raised the two killings in his maiden Parliament speech, remarking that “our blood is not cheap”.
The Kathua police have denied all allegations of custodial torture.
A summoning
A hilly village in Jammu’s Kathua district, Bhattodi is made up of small mud and concrete houses sprinkled across the downslope of a mountain.
The nearest town, Billawar, is 50 km away. No road goes up to Bhattodi. One has to trek downhill over 2 km to enter the village.
Around noon on February 4, a group of policemen landed outside the door of Mohammad Murid’s house. The officials, from a local police post in Duggaini, asked for three men – Murid and two of his four sons, Lal Din and Makhan Din.
Since only Makhan Din was home, he went along with his father.
At the police post, they were told that they had to go to the police station in Billawar, more than 45 km away, to meet a “senior officer”.
“That day, the weather was bad. It was raining and there were no vehicles,” 57-year-old Murid told Scroll. “We felt if we walked in the rain for such a distance, we would fall ill. We pleaded with the cops and told them we will go on our own tomorrow.”
They also rang up their sarpanch to intervene. Chaman Lal, former sarpanch of Bhattodi village, told Scroll: “I called the SHO of Billawar station and requested that Murid and Makhan [be allowed to] come to the police station tomorrow on their own as it was raining.”
Nevertheless, the officials at the police post in Duggiani proceeded with their plan.
It was 7.30 pm by the time they reached Billawar police station. The father and son were separated and their belongings confiscated. “They started accusing me of helping militants and providing them shelter,” recalled Murid. “They began asking me about Swaru.”
This was not the first time Murid was being questioned about his step-brother Swar Din alias Swaru Gujjar.
According to the police, Swar Din, a resident of Bhattodi, is based in Pakistan and is responsible for helping carry out several recent attacks on security forces in Kathua. One of those attacks, the police said, was in July last year when militants ambushed a convoy of the Indian Army and killed five soldiers in Badnotta village of Billawar.
Murid said he has never seen or been in touch with Swar Din ever since he disappeared 20-odd years ago. “He must have been eight years old when he disappeared from the village,” said Murid.
He added: “I swore upon Allah and his messenger that I have never seen him. When I said that, they began raining blows on me from all sides. The two men who beat me were in civvies while the one in uniform was continuously talking to someone on the phone.”
While he has been questioned regularly about Swar Din over the years, Murid said it was the first time he was beaten up.
A police officer in Jammu told Scroll that they had received inputs about the presence of Swaru Gujjar in the belt and so his family was summoned. Since there have been multiple militant attacks in this area from July last year, the police were on alert.
In his last video, Makhan Din swore that he had never seen Swar Din in his life. “I have never seen Swaru and I don’t know anything about his whereabouts,” Din said in the video.
According to Murid, Makhan Din was an infant when Swar Din had disappeared, some two decades ago.
Cries from the other room
Murid alleged that he and his son were beaten by turns for hours at the police station. “His shrieks resonated across the police station.”
Towards the end of the night, around 3 am on February 5, Murid said, he was put in a vehicle and dropped inside the office of the Deputy Superintendent of Police in Billawar.
Around 10 in the morning, Murid was pushed inside a civilian car and dropped near Naaz Bridge in Billawar, some 2 km from the police station. “It was the same cop who had beaten me up in the night. He asked me if anyone knows me here [near the Naaz bridge], I replied ‘no’,” Murid said. “Then, he asked me to forget about everything and not talk about it to anyone.”
What about his son, Makhan Din? Murid remembered asking the policeman who dropped him off. “The policeman told me that he had already reached home.”
The last video
Makhan Din had reached home, but he was still not a free man.
His family members told Scroll that he had been brought to the village by two policemen in a civilian car to fetch his mobile phone. “When he had been summoned a day before, Makhan’s phone had died due to low battery. He had taken his wife’s phone along,” said Lal Din. “During the interrogation, my brother was tortured into confessing that he has some Pakistani numbers on his phone. It’s because that’s the only way the cops stopped beating him.”
This time, however, the police did not come all the way down to Murid’s home in Bhattodi village. They had parked their car near a forested area locally known as Battadu.
According to the police, “Makhan had a number of suspicious contacts in Pakistan and other foreign countries” saved on his phone.
At home, the family members recalled, Makhan Din looked scared. “As soon as he reached home, he asked for new clothes. Then he performed ghusul (Islamic full-body ritual purification),” recalled another relative of Din, wishing to not give his name. “After that he was about to have his lunch when he received a call from the policemen to make it quick and return.”
While Makhan Din did leave his house immediately after the call and without eating his food, he did not go to the waiting policemen. Instead, he headed towards the mosque, some 500 metres from his home.
Inside the mosque, Makhan Din offered prayers and then shot a video on his mobile phone.
“Today, the cops have asked me to bring my phone…I lied to them about some fictional numbers from which I received calls,” Makhan Din said in the video. “Now I have to show them. How can I show them when I don’t even have those numbers? They will beat me again”.
Towards the end of the 3-minute 48-second video, Din takes out a packet from his trousers. “I have said everything, keeping the Quran on my head. But now, helplessly I have to take this medicine. And I will die, so that others [family] behind me are not bothered.”
Makhan Din shared his video with a number of his relatives and friends. Lal Din, who was still far from home in Mandli along with his father and other relatives, was also one of the recipients.
“Makhan called me and said he has revealed the entire truth in the video,” recalled Lal Din. “Then, he said, he has taken poison.”
The long journey to hospital
In a state of panic, Lal Din called up almost everyone in the village to look for Makhan Din. Soon, they were able to locate him inside the mosque.
“He was alive and talking when we put him on our shoulders and rushed towards the road,” recalled Din’s relative, who did not want to be identified. “We immediately put him inside a pickup truck to take him to hospital.”
But the journey to the hospital in Billawar, some 50 km from his village, was long and winding due to lack of a proper road.
Moreover, Din’s family members said, the vehicle was intercepted by the policemen waiting for Din’s return near the forested area of Battadu. “They forcibly dragged him out from the pickup truck and put him inside their own car,” the relative further added.
Even the attempts to give him water were prevented by the police, the family alleged.
The pickup truck followed the car in which policemen were taking Makhan.
“But when they felt his [Makhan’s] condition was worsening, they stopped their car and put Makhan back inside the pick-up truck, saying that the pick-up truck is fast and he will reach the hospital quickly,” recalled the relative. “They took Makhan’s phone and sped away.”
The car carrying the two policemen were stopped by Lal Din and his relatives at Mandli. “The two men identified themselves as Mohd Shafi and Lucky,” said Lal Din. “We also shot a video of the two confessing that they are from the police.”
Makhan Din’s family has submitted the video to the tehsildar who has been tasked to carry out a magisterial probe in the incident.
After an arduous journey of more than two-and-a-half hours, Makhan Din eventually reached Billawar hospital in the evening. “Doctors declared him dead,” recalled Lal Din.
‘What about his children?’
Makhan Din was one of the few people in the village to have studied till Class 12. He is remembered by the village as a sombre, polite man. “He was mild-mannered and would talk very politely with everyone. His image in the village was of a very simple man who was into earning his livelihood and taking care of his family,” said his brother Lal Din.
Several local residents in Bhattodi who took part in Din’s final bath and funeral confirmed that his body bore torture marks.
According to Murid and Lal Din, Makhan Din’s buttocks were swollen and his body was full of bruises. “It looked like they had given electricity shocks to him,” said Mohammad Murid, the father of the victim.
The family has not been given the copy of the post-mortem report yet.
The police officer Scroll spoke to confirmed that Makhan Din was also questioned in connection with militancy.
Asked if they had found any evidence of his connection with militants, he replied. “That is part of the ongoing investigation and everything will come out.”
His brother Lal Din questions the story that Din was an over-ground worker helping militants. “Tell me, if my brother was an OGW of militants, would the police have let him go home alone to bring his phone?” he asked.
“This has been brought to our notice and we are looking into that as well,” the police officer told Scroll. “If that’s the case, then we are also going to look into procedural lapses on part of those involved. Leaving a suspect out on his own is against the procedure.”
The officer added that they were also investigating how Makhan Din was able to get an “insecticide” so readily in order to end his life. "If a poisonous substance is available so freely in the village, that's also a problem.”
Makhan Din is survived by his two young daughters, both of them below four years of age, and his pregnant wife. “Who will take care of his daughters and wife? Shouldn’t the government bear their expenditure?” asked Lal Din.
So far, the government has not announced any compensation for the family of the victim. “Compensation is just one part,” said Murid. “We want the guilty to be punished.”
All photographs by Safwat Zargar.
