Kasaragod: Sergeant P V Sureshan (49), who retired as a Ground Training Instructor after 21 years in the Indian Air Force, lost his left leg to police brutality at Mangaluru Central Railway Station.

After the amputation on February 11, he was shifted to the ward at Father Muller Medical College Hospital in Mangaluru on Friday.

The incident happened on February 1, when, like on the first of every month, he took the Malabar Express from his native place, Nileshwar, and reached Mangaluru Central at 10.15 am to go to the military canteen.

On reaching the station, he felt unwell and nauseous, likely due to travelling in an overcrowded general compartment, he said.

Sureshan decided to rest on the platform bench for a while before proceeding to the canteen. "When I was resting, a police officer woke me up and said sleeping there was not allowed. I told him I am an ex-serviceman and I was feeling unwell," he said. Sureshan retired as a Ground Training Instructor from the Airmen Training School (ATS) at Sambra in Belagavi in 2014.

The police officer left and the sergeant dozed off. Within a few minutes, he woke up to a sharp stinging pain in his leg. "The policeman who asked me not to sleep there was hitting my leg with his baton. When I tried to get up he beat me again," the sergeant said.

Following the repeated assault, Sureshan was unable to walk. Back home, his wife, Jayashree K V, and elder daughter, Hridhya Suresh, became worried because he was not attending calls. "Around 9.50 am, he called to say the train was reaching Mangaluru. But after that, he was not attending calls," said Jayashree.

Around 8.15 pm, he called home to say that he was not able to walk because his legs were paralysed. "I got scared and called Mangaluru police station and asked an officer to go and check on him at the railway station," said Hridhya, a civil engineer preparing for UPSC examinations.

The officer reached the station and, through video call, spotted Sureshan. "By then, there was no train to Mangaluru. So we asked the police to take him to hospital. They put him on an autorickshaw and sent him to Wenlock General Hospital," the daughter said.

The following morning, on February 2, the wife and daughter took the early morning train to Mangaluru and brought him back to Nileshwar.

Sureshan said he did not tell his wife and daughter about the assault by police. The family took him to Nileshwar Taluk Hospital in the evening. Doctors there advised immediate consultation with a neurologist. The family then took him to a cooperative hospital in Nileshwar on February 3. "The doctors there found that my father had suffered a lot of internal injuries. The kidneys were also damaged. They asked us to take him to Mangaluru," said Hridhya. That same day, his wife and daughter took Sureshan to Father Muller Hospital. "The doctors at Father Muller found that he was severely beaten and asked us what had happened. That's when he told the doctors about the assault by the police," said the daughter.

The doctors found that his left leg had lost sensation, the blood vessels and nerves were damaged, and the two kidneys had failed because of that.

His blood creatinine level was 7.8 mg/dL, well above the normal range of 0.7 to 1.3 mg/dL, she said. (The kidneys are responsible for filtering creatinine out of the blood and excreting it through urine.)

The doctors at Father Muller first removed damaged muscle tissue to see if blood flow could be restored. They could not. "By then, my father’s condition deteriorated, and he was placed on a ventilator in the ICU," said Hridhya.

On February 11, after seven days in the ICU, the doctors amputated his left leg at the knee to save his life. After the surgery, the creatinine level dropped to normal and doctors said dialysis is not needed," she said.

Police have not identified accused
After the hospital intimated the police about the assault, Mangaluru Railway Police Station filed an FIR on February 6 under Section 118 of the BNS for voluntarily causing hurt by dangerous weapons.

On February 14, when Onmanorama contacted Mangaluru City Police Commissioner Anupam Agrawal, he said he was unaware of the assault on the Air Force sergeant.

But the station house officer of Mangaluru Railway Police Station - Sub-Inspector Indira Jatti Adigundi, said he had not begun the investigation because the complainant was still in the hospital. When asked if he had checked the CCTV footage from the station, he admitted he had not. To be sure, the FIR has recorded that the police assaulted Sureshan on Platform No. 1. "The victim will need to identify the exact spot where he was assaulted before we can review the CCTV footage," said the Station House Officer.