A Son, a Piece of Evidence, a Protest Banner: What the Mansa SSP Owed the Body on the Road

One Body, Three Meanings and an SSP Who Must Choose Which Comes First

Imagine you are the officer at the barricade. The trucks are in position. Coming toward you is a procession carrying Daljit Singh, 35, of Bhamme Kalan. His family says drugs killed him and wants to lay him at the Mansa protest, now in its 15th day, that began after anti-drug activist Parvinder Singh Jhota was shot dead.

Your investigators, according to the SSP's account, have found that someone brought the body in a vehicle and dumped it by the roadside. A murder case is being registered. To you, the body is evidence. To the family, it is proof that the State has failed.

To his mother and his wife, it is a son and a husband. You cannot treat all three meanings equally at once. The real question is which one you put first and how you take what you need without destroying the others.

The easy answer and why it fails The easy answer is that the law is on your side.

BNSS Section 194 empowers the police to hold an inquest into an unnatural death. If this may be murder, the body has to reach a post-mortem table, not a protest stage. So you take it. But a legal power to secure a body is not permission to take it in any manner you like.

The officers who carried Daljit across a road divider were filmed doing it and Opposition leaders circulated the videos within hours. The SSP said only mild force was used and he later reportedly gave assurances that the family would perform the last rites and that the police would not cremate the body without their consent.

Those assurances came after the taking. The order of events is what people remember.

Why holding back is not weakness Holding back has a cost of its own and it deserves to be stated honestly.

A body at the centre of a 15-day agitation that already demands the Chief Minister's and the DGP's resignations can turn grief into a crowd beyond anyone's control. Jhota's own body still has not had a post-mortem, because his supporters are withholding consent until their demands are met. An SSP who lets a second body become a bargaining chip risks a standoff with no end.

What Article 21

asks of you here The Allahabad High Court's 2020 Hathras ruling settled one thing: the dignity Article 21 protects does not end at death and public order does not justify overriding a family's right to its dead. That ruling was about cremation. Its reasoning reaches the road too. The State may take custody of a body for inquest. It may not treat the body as an object to be cleared.

The resolution I would not let the body go to the morcha, because a post-mortem in a possible murder case is not negotiable.

But I would not lift it by force while negotiation was still possible. I would hold the barricade and call the Executive Magistrate. I would offer the family what the law already allows and the moment demands: a relative travelling with the body, a videographed post-mortem, a copy of the report and a written assurance on last rites given before anyone moves.

Force would come only if talks broke down and then with a stretcher and the family present. That choice costs hours. The crowd may grow and superiors may call it softness. Taking the body in front of the cameras costs more: it confirms the family's claim, that the State shows up with force rather than answers, at the very moment the police say they are investigating a murder.