Lenin Raghuvanshi

Human Rights Defender

Uttar Pradesh

HRDA has issued an urgent appeal to the National Human Rights Commission of India on April 30, 2018 over the manhandling of Mr. Lenin Raghuvanshi by police personnel in Uttar Pradesh. Mr. Raghuvanshi is a human rights activist and the founder and Chief Executive Officer of Peoples’ Vigilance Committee on Human Rights (PVCHR).

On April 21, 2018, Mr. Raghuvanshi’s younger brother Mr. Kanad, was badly beaten up by some people while attending a marriage ceremony in his neighbourhood. This resulted in a severe head injury that required 18 stitches. He complained to the police but they did not file an FIR. Mr. Raghuvanshi came to know of the incident on April 26, 2018, after his return from London. He went to the Cantonment Police Station and asked for the reasons for not registering a FIR. He was asked to go to the Pahariya police outpost. When he reached the outpost, he was mistreated by three policemen. The policemen became more aggressive, removed their name tags and resorted to violence against him. He tried to leave the outpost on his motorbike.

Meanwhile, one of the police officers stopped him and twisted his arm and pushed his motorbike to the floor. When Mr. Lenin asked them to stop this, the police officers reacted to this with abuse, saying that, “you have created lots of troubles for police by filling cases against us” (in relation to human rights violations). Meanwhile, more police officers arrived from the Cantonment Police Station and Mr. Lenin requested them to get his medico-legal examination done, but they refused and asked him to leave.