A family is seeking over $2 million in compensation from the police for medical expenses incurred by a Strathspey, East Coast Demerara man, who had to undergo emergency surgery and hospitalisation due to injuries they say he suffered while in police custody.
Premchan (only name), 47, of 125 Strathspey, was in police custody from December 26th to December 28th, 2018, during which time he claims he was brutalised by ranks at the Vigilance Police Station.
Efforts to contact Divisional Commander of ‘C’ Division Calvin Brutus yesterday proved futile as calls went unanswered.
Premchan was arrested on December 26th, subsequent to a report of verbal assault made against him by Navita Chand, the mother of his child. He and the woman told reporters that he had walked to the police vehicle when he was arrested, an indication that he was in perfect health.
He said after he was arrested, he was placed to sit on the bench in the station and after some time, he was instructed to enter one of the cells of the lock-up. However, he said, he refused and resisted the police. They “tell me I have to go in the lock-up. I tell them I am not going in no lock-up and they start beating me. It was three of them, they lashed me with the gun all over my body, I fall down and I couldn’t see,” Premchan recalled.
He recounted that the policemen “stomped on me with their boots and kick me in my back. After that, I don’t know what happened.”
The father of one stated that when he awoke on 27th December, he realised that he was in the lock-up and was in severe pain. “The next morning I couldn’t move, I was crying out for pain. One of them come to me and said to stop keep noise. He box me up and cuff me in my belly and lock back the door and gone,” Premchan said.
He went on to state that about an hour later, a senior policeman visited him in the lock-up and asked what had happened and he related his story. “I tell he them police beat me and he get them to take me [to the health centre] at Nabacalis and then to Mahaicony and bring me and put me back in the lock-up. They fetch me in the sheet because I couldn’t have walked. When I come back, they placed me in the lock-up and I lie down in the lock-up all the time crying out for pain,” the visibly traumatised man related.
Chand related that on December 28th, she went to the station to bail him out but was shocked when she observed his condition.
“After I saw him, I asked the police, ‘What happened?’ But no one answered me. I say, ‘What happened? How this man like this? When y’all come for he, he was walking. What happened now?’ But they didn’t answer. I saw three policemen fetch him out of the station in a bed sheet and they placed him on the ground and I had to tell them put him in the car,” she recounted.
The woman said hours after being released, Premchan kept crying out and she took him to the Woodlands Hospital. He cried out about headaches and backaches.
At the hospital, she said, doctors ordered tests that showed he had internal bleeding and spinal injuries.
The woman said that the doctors had to perform emergency surgery on Premchan to stop the bleeding in his brain. He was hospitalised for 13 days and racked up a bill of $2,014,000.
“I was a construction worker but now I cannot work. I still feel pain to my head and back. Sometime my head swinging, and my foot bottom numb. You can’t feel anything, I can’t walk. People have to help me. I can’t stand up neither… people have to help me,” the distraught man said.
As a result, family members are seeking answers as it is unclear what led to Premchan’s injuries and they would like to be compensated for the medical expenses. They noted that every time they checked with the police on the status of the investigation, they are told that they will be contacted.
Meanwhile, the family’s attorney, Anil Nandlall, said that they will be filing legal action against the police in the civil court.
He called it another case of allegations made against the police of brutality and violence meted out to persons in police custody. He pointed out that such incidents cannot continue as it is a “manifestation of gross human rights violation.” He called on the police to conduct a professional, transparent, and independent investigation.
Nandlall stressed that there were serious injuries sustained “at the hands of the police and serious allegations of criminal and violent action by the police against a citizen of this country. We cannot allow these incident to go without a response.”
