‘Cops tortured me for confession’

“I have to keep a distance,” said Lodhi who was arrested by Kalyanpur police in the case on October 2. Besides finding a new home,Lodhi now also has to find a job. Before he was sent to jail,Lodhi was a casual worker at a biscuit factory at Dada Nagar industrial area,earning Rs 2,500 a month.

Police kept Lodhi in illegal custody for three days,subjected him to a torture to extract a “confession” of sexually abusing Divya and used it to frame him in a false case. Luckily,Divya’s mother Sonu Singh Bhadoria refused to accept the police claim and demanded a CBI inquiry. The CB-CID,with the help of DNA tests,on December 30 held Piyush Verma,son of the Bharti Gyan Sthali school’s owner,as the main culprit.

On Monday evening,a local court released Lodhi on bail after 89 days,following an application by CB-CID stating that there was no evidence against him.

On October 2,a team of Kalyanpur police had arrested Lodhi from Safipur area of Unnao and brought him to Kanpur,Lodhi said.

“From October 2 to October 5,the police tortured me,” he said.

Initially,Lodhi was kept in a vacant building in Kalyanpur area,then taken to the Indira Nagar police outpost. Late in the night,he was taken to Kalyanpur police station and tortured. “First they thrashed me with belts,ropes and sticks. Then they put a chair on my toes and sat on it,” he said. Unable to bear pain,Lodhi agreed to do what the police wanted. As directed by police,Lodhi told media,in the presence of Circle Officer Laxmi Niwas Mishra and other police officers,on October 6 that he had sexually assaulted the minor at his Roshan Nagar residence on September 20 when her mother was away for work.

According to the story,he gave Divya some medicine as she started bleeding. On September 27,she started bleeding profusely and died before she could be taken to hospital. Bhadoria said she knew that Lodhi could not have done the crime. According to her,she was offered “Rs 5 lakh to make a settlement with the school authorities”. Asked what action they will take against policemen who kept Lodhi in illegal custody and tortured him,DIG Ashok Mutha Jain said he is yet to get the CB-CID report.

Inspector Anil Kumar was the investigating officer in the case,which was being directly monitored by ASP (Kanpur Rural) Lal Bahadur and Circle Officer Laxmi Niwas Mishra.

A class VI student,Divya died soon after she was dropped outside her residence by the school staff on September 27. The postmortem report confirmed sexual assault on Divya. On October 6,Kalyanpur police termed him as the main culprit in the case and announced his arest. The state government,on October 23,transferred the case to CB-CID which proved that Piyush was the main culprit.

Varma and his sons are lodged in a jail.