Blinding Justice

Bizarre police brutality

Salig Ram Saha, 17, the son of a goldsmith, had just collected 800 rupees (about $100) from one of his father's customers, when he ran into the police dragnet. In the crime-ridden state of Bihar, police assumed that the young man had stolen the cash. They took him to the Rajon police station. When he would not confess, they pinned him down to the floor and punctured his eyes with needles. Then corrosive acid was poured into the bleeding sockets. Saha, whose eyelids are completely fused shut, is one of at least 30 people who have been blinded by Bihar police since the fall of 1979. Only one of the victims was ever tried or convicted.

Disclosure of the Bihar police brutality--reported in detail by the Calcutta Sunday magazine--sent shock waves through India. At a heated 3 1/2-hour session of parliament last week, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi announced that her government had begun an investigation of the atrocities. So far, 15 policemen and officers have been suspended, including one jail superintendent, for neglecting to note the injuries. Ironically, he had assigned attendants to help the blinded prisoners in his custody and had forwarded their petitions of complaint to Bihar's inspector general. The government has also named a team of ophthalmologists to determine if any prisoner's vision can be restored. There may be hope for a few victims, but in most cases, the optic nerves have been destroyed. Mrs. Gandhi has promised about $2,000 compensation to each victim. "I want to express my deep agony over what has happened," she told parliament. "I felt physically sickened when I heard. What are we coming to in this country? That anyone could do such a thing is beyond my comprehension."

Yet some Biharis say they do comprehend. With a population of 70 million, many of them landless and impoverished, in a region roughly the size of New England, Bihar is one of India's most volatile states. It is an area bedeviled by crime, caste and religious clashes, where bandits subject people to daily terror. Many believe that some kind of firm measures by the police are necessary.

In the district of Bhagalpur, 5,000 Biharis sat on railroad tracks and blocked trains to protest the action taken against the suspended police officers. Elsewhere in the district, villagers supporting strong police measures have threatened work stoppages. One Bihari woman, whose father has been robbed twice, insisted that "something must be done" to stop the crime. What if the accused are not guilty? She shrugged. If police arrested them, she said, they were probably guilty.

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