Coimbatore: “My inner parts ache terribly. My limbs, as you can see, are still swollen. The needle stabs under my nails throb with pain. I cannot sleep; not because of all these sores outside and within me but because of the terrible fear that the police, having been dragged to the court by my daughter, will now turn their wrath upon her. I fear for her life”, says Chandra, 49, an inmate of the Central Prison for Women at Coimbatore. DC correspondent met the traumatized poor woman in the jail as a concerned ‘friend’ along with her lawyer.

Chandra was brought to the lock-up on August 14 even as the country was getting ready to celebrate Independence Day next morning. She was accused of murdering her landlady at Udumalpet (Tirupur district) on August 10. The police took her to the station saying they only wanted to ask her a few questions but she was allegedly subjected to the most brutal torture a woman could endure.

“Look at my fingers; pins were inserted under the nails. I couldn’t walk for a long time because I was brutally beaten with lathis by seven male officers after being undressed and hanged upside down. I do not know whether I was bleeding or menstruating. I lay unconscious for hours,” Chandra said as tears rolled down her weary face.

“I was forced to accept that I murdered my landlady, why would I kill her, tell me. After all that beating in the station for how many days I cannot recall, I had no option but to parrot what the police ordered me to say before the magistrate”, said the prisoner. “When I was finally brought to this jail after the magistrate’s order, the prison officials saw my condition and told the Udumalpet police to get a medical certificate from the government hospital”.