“Please stop. I can’t breathe.”
Civil servant Rajnil Singh claims he pleaded with police officers at the Sigatoka Police Station to stop punching him on the stomach and chest after they detained him there on February 22.
Mr Singh, a senior agricultural officer at the Sigatoka Research Station, is the second Sigatoka resident to allege police brutality during the investigations of the Lawai double homicide in January.
Mr Singh, 47, told The Fiji Times he was surrounded by five police officers in the interview room where he was punched, slapped and verbally abused while they demanded that he confess to the murders of businessman Sesha Reddy and his wife Mirdu.
“About 10 or 15 minutes into the interview, one of the officers punched me on the side of my body,” Mr Singh said.
“Then while I was trying to recover from that they told me ‘stand up’ and that’s when they started punching me on the stomach and my chest.
“They forced me to stand up while they kept punching me.
“Then after that one officer took both my hands and handcuffed it behind my back. This is when they pulled my arms up behind my back and forced me to touch the top of a door frame.
“It was so painful that I thought my shoulders were going to give out.
“It twisted my arms so badly that a few days later my arms started swelling.”
He said the officers then forced him on the floor where an officer stood on his back.
“At this point my chest was in so much pain that I kept telling them I couldn’t breathe.
“I begged them to take me to the hospital because I started vomiting.
“But they wouldn’t listen to me and just kept laughing.”
He said it took all his strength to muster the courage to leave the interview room heading towards his car.
“I wanted to get out of there and go to the hospital. I kept vomiting and I couldn’t take the pain in my chest.”
Mr Singh said after numerous pleas, the officers finally took him to the hospital after a three-hour interrogation.
“When I got to the hospital I heard one of the officers tell the nurse to give me an injection that would make me sleep.
“They didn’t even tell me or warn me about it. After the injection I went straight to sleep but after a few hours they woke me up and took me back to the station.”
He said the grilling resumed until 9pm.
“I spent the night in the cell and that’s when I heard they would be bringing in Mohammed Shahim and that they would use him to blame me for the crime.
“I kept telling them that they could do whatever they wanted but they would not find anything. They could check my bank records and search my house, they will find nothing.”
Mr Singh said the next day he was taken to his home at the Sigatoka Research Station where police officers searched his house for items that would place him at the scene of the crime.
“I found out they were looking for shoes and a decoder but they found nothing.
“It’s really frustrating that they put me and my family through this after I kept telling them that I didn’t know anything about that murder.”
Mr Singh said he was working on January 28 when a report of Tropical Cyclone Ana was issued.
“We had one of our ministry tractors near Mr Reddy’s home in Lawai and I was on my way to check on it but I couldn’t go all the way because the Nasau crossing was flooded.
“I had spoken to Mr Reddy from time to time but only because he was using our tractor.
“That was the only time I interacted with him.”
Police spokeswoman Ana Naisoro confirmed a police complaint was lodged by Mr Singh.
She said an inquiry into the allegations has begun.
