Grief hovers in the air, and eerie silence clings to the house of Udit Gayake, a 22-year-old engineer beaten to death by two policemen, Santosh Bamaniya and Saurabh Arya, in Bhopal last week. Udit’s parents whimper, still not able to come to terms with the death of their only son after two daughters. “I will come home the next day” were the last few words Udit’s parents heard from him on the phone call.
A few hours later, another call rang, but this shattered the life of Udit’s family. The other side of the call was Udit’s friend, who said, “Go to AIIMS (Bhopal), uncle,” to his father. On reaching the hospital, the family saw Udit’s lifeless body.
“Udit’s friend called and said there had been an accident and to come to the hospital. When we got there, we saw that he wasn’t even alive,” grief-stricken Shewta, Udit’s sister, told FoEJ Media.
“He was the backbone of our family. With him gone, it’s as if the very support of our home has collapsed,” Shewta added.
After securing a job following his engineering graduation, Udit returned to his hometown of Bhopal. On Thursday, he traveled to his engineering college in Sehore with friends to collect his degree certificate, necessary for submitting to his employer, unaware that this would be his final trip.
Udit died after reportedly being assaulted by police officers in Bhopal’s Piplani area. CCTV footage captured him dancing with friends before fleeing into a lane, where a policeman was seen striking him with a stick. In response to the footage going public, authorities booked constables Santosh Bamaniya and Saurabh Arya for murder. Both officers have since been arrested and remanded to 14 days in judicial custody.
“This is a murder committed by policemen, and more than 48 hours have passed, yet the Home Minister, who is also the Chief Minister, hasn’t spoken to the family. Neither the local minister nor any official has met them. This government has become completely insensitive,” State Congress president Jitu Patwari said.
According to eyewitness accounts, the constables allegedly stripped Udit and subjected him to repeated beatings with sticks. He reportedly began vomiting soon after the incident, following which his friends rushed him to a nearby hospital. He was later referred to AIIMS, where doctors pronounced him dead on arrival.
“The police beat him so brutally that his pancreas ruptured, and his blood couldn’t circulate properly. They crushed his legs with their boots, slapped him, and struck him with sticks,” Shewta told FoEJ Media, with the pain of losing her only brother.
“Even if we had found him alive, we wouldn’t have been able to save him; he had been beaten so severely,” she added.
Shewta further revealed that an FIR has been lodged, but she alleged that “Even the FIR was written in a twisted way.”
Udit’s postmortem reports also revealed a ruptured pancreas and several fatal internal injuries. According to his friends, they had gone to a party in Indrapuri, and around 1:30 am, police personnel stopped them. Frantic, Udit ran into dark lanes where policemen caught him and allegedly beat him to death.
