Maharashtra-Just Routine Torture

SUKHDEV SAMPAT GHORPADE was a young Buddhist of 25. fie immolated himself on June 15. During the Emergency, Sukhdev had been brutally treated by the village police patil, Kisan Pandu Baviskar, and this harassment had continued thereafter. Baviskar, along with Jamadar Nav- range, and an inspector attached to the Soygao police station, Auranga- bad district, frequently arrested Sukhdev, locked him up in the police station, and subjected him to merciless beatings. They would accuse him of stealing and search his house. Once they drove out his wife, who had only the week before given birth to a baby, and ransacked the hut, the baskets, pots and boxes, and even the cradle in which the new-bom infant was sleeping. When this treatment by the minions of 'law and order' continued even after the Emergency, Sukhdev could endure it no more. On the afternoon of June 15, at about 1,30, he set fire to himself.