Dead Man Put In Wheelchair, Family Told To Collect Body From Assam Jail

A man, dressed in a blue T-shirt and denims, lay slumped in a wheelchair outside an Assam jail. The 27-year-old man was dead. The family was asked to take the body home.

Shailja Borgohain had been brought to the Dibrugarh Central Jail three days ago in connection with a case involving family feud. According to reports, the man, resident of 2 No. Gandhia Puroni Gaon in Lengeri, Tingkhong, died mysteriously in jail.

On Thursday, he was granted bail and his family had come to take him home. Instead, he was dead and the jail officials had put him in a wheelchair as if he was merely ill.

This led to a heated situation in front of the jail, with the family refusing to accept the body and claiming it's a custodial death.

"We were handed over the lifeless body in a wheelchair. The way the jail authorities treated him was insensitive and was a gross violation of human rights. He was a healthy man when he was arrested. We want to know what happened to him in jail," a relative was quoted saying by news agency PTI.

A team under Dibrugarh police station officer-in-charge Raju Bhadhur Chetri came and took the body for postmortem.

The family members have filed a complaint at the Dibrugarh police station.

The jail authorities have registered a case of unnatural death and sent the body for postmortem.