‘He aspired to be just 1% of Babasaheb, but police killed him’: A family in Maharashtra’s Parbhani seeks justice https://indianexpress.com/article/india/he-aspired-to-be-just-1-of-babasaheb-but-police-killed-him-a-family-seeks-justice-9736899/ Siddhant Konduskar
December 21, 2024
On December 15, Somnath Suryawanshi, who was studying to become a lawyer like Ambedkar, died in custody, two days before his law exam. The interim postmortem report attributed the immediate cause of death as “shock following multiple injuries”. Somnath’s death triggered protests in Parbhani town .
After the Dalit protests on December 10 turned violent, between December 11 and 12, around 50 people were rounded up in police action, including Somnath. Locals claim police came at night to Dalit neighborhoods, and that even women “were not spared”. Somnath was picked up from Shankar Nagar, a largely Dalit settlement, and remanded in police custody for two days. On December 15, the family was told he had died of a “heart attack”.
In the Assembly Friday, CM Fadnavis said that the man behind the “desecration” of the Constitution had been under treatment for his mental condition since 2012, and had expressed regret for his actions. “A committee of four doctors gave a report that he was suffering from a mental and psychotic disorder and needs to take regular treatment from a psychiatrist,” he said.