 Hello and let's talk about the alleged custodial killing of two men in Tamil Nadu. The man P. Jairaj who was 60 and his son J. Benix who was 31 died at a hospital on June 22nd and 23rd respectively after having been detained on June 19th. The case was led to an uproar in Tamil Nadu and across the country over the way the police functions. This is an especially significant issue at a time of the lockdown when they have been granted considerable amounts of power. We will discuss this issue but first here are some details of the case. Jairaj and Benix were detained from their mobile shop for allegedly violating lockdown restrictions. They were remanded to judicial custody and lodged the Kovilpatti sub-jail on June 20th. Frontline courts are related to the men as saying that they had been brutally beaten up and even tortured even before being brought to the magistrate. A report from the Hindu also cites that their injuries were suffered before they were brought to the sub-jail. In the coming days, they fell ill and were admitted to the Kovilpatti government hospital where they died. The right activists say that the men were not directly even presented before the magistrate who remanded them nonetheless. The incident has led to major protests in Tamil Nadu as well as calls for an inquiry. Due to the pressure, Chief Minister Adapati Pardini Swami was forced to announce the CBI inquiry into the case on Sunday. The mother I mentioned in the Madras High Court is looking into the issue. An inspector and two sub-inspectors have been placed under suspension and opposition parties are demanding that murder charges be filed against those police officers responsible. We talked to Tamil Nadu correspondent Neelambaran on this issue. Thank you Neelambaran for joining us. So we just looked at some of the key details of the case. So could you tell us a bit about what exactly is the situation on the ground right now, especially in Tothuburi district but also in the rest of Tamil Nadu because last week there has been an upsurge of protests on this issue. So what's exactly happening? What does the government stand? And what are some of the key issues? Political parties, opposition parties and social movements are raising. Because you know the case has come out as another example of the police brutality in Tamil Nadu. It's like there are a lot of previous examples as well. And this has come at a time when the lockdown is ongoing, the police is empowered with more power to curb the movement of people across the streets and all those stuff. At present the government is vehemently defending this particular custodial debts. And even the minister has quoted in a press meet that only if the person dies inside the lock up it can be considered as a custodial debt. And we cannot have a much absurd defense than this. And the reports, the police have said that one died of fever, one died of other ailments and all those stuff. The opposition have hit the streets, particularly immediately the CPIM hit the streets with protests. The state secretary was detained for conducting a protest in Kudalur. And the DMK leader has demanded immediate inquiry into the incident. And the suspension and I don't mean the legal course of action to be taken against the cops who are involved in the incident also. The traders union across the state down that's a shutters in protest against this custodial debt also. And the human rights organizations have also demanded a detailed inquiry into the repeated incidents of police action against the suspects. And very recently we have seen a lot of issues of bathroom slippages in police stations. When the police pick up a couple of or one or two suspects for an inquiry, the next day a photograph will come up in the newspapers with statements of they slipped inside the bathrooms and fractured their hand or leg or anything. So this is going beyond control and the state has to interfere immediately. And Medra psychote has also taken, you know, required so more to action, registered so more to action. And they have required report from the superintendent of police as well. And the DMK leader and Tuthukku DMP, Kanimuli has demanded NHRC inquiry as well in the issue. So what are the some of the demands that are being raised by the movements also at a larger level not mean not specifically only with respect to this incident, which is about action against the culprits. But at a social level, what are some of the key issues and debates that are coming up right now? The Tamil Nadu police have been known for their brutal attitude towards the suspects. A lot of, you know, even in 2018 the state stood second in custodial models, next one lead to Gujarat also. So there has been a, you know, a prolonged discussion about the way the suspects are handled in Tamil Nadu, which has demanded a lot of reforms in the roles as well. And the role of the judiciary in permitting custody to the suspects has also come into question. A couple of days back, former Justice of Madras High Court, Mr. Chandru has also demanded the dismissal of the magistrate who without physically verifying the victims allowed remand. So such issues are coming up every day, every now and then they are coming up. The compensation is being also sought for the family of the victims along with the, you know, a government job for the family members. But in a larger perspective, the issue is more, you know, much worse than what we have understood. A lot of things are happening, but nothing much is coming out. The inspector who is, you know, accused in this particular case also is a sixth accused in an attempt to murder of his own son-in-law. That news came out just today. And the two sub-inspectors who are suspended in this incident has also have, you know, criminal records or the same things which they have repeated earlier as well. They have a track record of transfers, you know, actions, all those things are also existing. So the department as a whole needs a lot of change where, you know, the government has to stop supporting these kind of actions. And in the 2018 incident where a lot of deaths or custodial deaths were reported, no judicial inquiry was also, you know, permitted by the government of Tamil Nadu. So in a way, the government is trying to, you know, threaten the people by encouraging such actions of the police department. So the social, the human rights is being severely violated in many cases. The social right activists have been demanding the action against the police. And the district superintendent has been, you know, some sort of hiding of facts and all those things are also happening. And, you know, yesterday another individual has also died reportedly because of the police brutality in Tenkasi district, the neighboring district of Tutukudi as well. So this is, you know, some sort of, you know, ongoing process which has to be stopped at the earliest. Right. And as far as the government's response is concerned, we know that the government is already under a lot of criticism for its handling of the COVID-19 disease. And even before it has been under criticism for a general lack of direction and inability to pursue an agenda. So how is this being seen from that perspective? Actually the government's failure is coming out every another day. The spread is very wide. And the case of Madurai, I want to remind you here because the Madurai MP Mr. Venkatesan has been demanding the increase of tests in Madurai because a lot of people are coming back to their hometowns. That is some case in many other districts as well. The cases are also increasing in other districts also, apart from Chennai. So a minister, Mr. RB Udayakumar has threatened case against the minister, against the member of parliament for demanding the increasing tests. So that is the attitude of this government in handling this pandemic. So the failures are continuing, the number of cases are increasing, the discrepancies are existing in many areas, including the number of tests. And Chennai Corporation today has not released the number of cases which has been reported in a particular zone as well. So a lot of hiccups are going on. There is a communication gap between the health ministry and the Chennai Corporation. The relief measures have not reached the people who are deserving. A lot of things are happening. And this is another jewel in the cap, which is the government does not want, any government does not want. So the government has a lot of things to handle. And with a very short time for the elections to come, the government is in a soup to say to be honest. Thank you so much, Hiraman, for talking to us. In our next segment, we look at certain high-profile sports persons contracting COVID-19. This includes Tennis Star Novak Djokovic and members of the Pakistani cricket team. We talked to Leslie Xavier of the sports desk on these developments. Leslie, thank you so much for joining us. So quite a few high-profile cases of COVID-19 in the sporting world the past week. And this, of course, is not completely unexpected or out of the blue. It's sport involving a lot of contact. It's sport generally involves a lot of contacts. Sport involves a lot of travel. So in some senses, it was expected, maybe. But nonetheless, it's a worrying trend for both social and reasons and the sector itself. So could you talk a bit about these aspects? Yeah, the weird bit is that this has nothing to do with the sports, I mean, inevitability that there would be contact and there would be chances of spreading because these things happen primarily because of lack of planning or following of protocol and also a callous approach towards safety and towards the norms that have been set by WHO and established and fine-tuned by a lot of sporting leagues across the world where action has restarted. For instance, football, the leagues have restarted and though cases have crept up, but very minimal testing has been there and players have been kept in safe bubbles and things have been okay. So it's not exactly because of the inevitability of contact that sport brings. And so getting into the eye-profile test positives that happened last week, the first news was from the tennis world, Djokovic, the biggest player who got infected was obviously Novak Djokovic, world number one. And so the five tennis players who have gotten affected by this are all part of this Adriath Tour, which was a charity tour which was initiated more or less by Djokovic and to aid basically those tennis players who have been struggling, the lower-ranked tennis players who have been struggling to make ends meet. So it was a revenue-generating and a philanthropic endeavor, so to speak, but Djokovic to start with has had a very... The approach towards this pandemic has been little questionable because he doesn't believe in vaccination himself and so has been very vocal that he would never get vaccinated even if a vaccine comes out. So perfect, it's fine. A person is entitled to his own personal beliefs, but when a sportsperson of Djokovic's nature, I mean, says something like this, it is likely to sway a lot of opinion in his favor. There will be a lot of people who look up to him and they would think that, yeah, maybe as a point, maybe vaccination would open you up to a lot of other issues physically and maybe that's why when a fit and globally renowned person like Djokovic who has a lot to lose if he doesn't vaccinate because at some point when the vaccine comes out, only the vaccinated players will be allowed to play in the tennis store. So he was vehemently against vaccination. He said that he will never get vaccinated and then he organized this tour and apparently when the tour match was happening in Croatia, there was no protocols of social distancing and safety factors were taken into, I mean, were put in place. It was quite a mess, so to speak. And a couple of days later, Grigor Dimitro was the first person who came out, who's test came out positive and following which before other players plus Djokovic. And the latest in the list is Goran Ivenevich who is now at Djokovic's coach. While at the same time, Alexander Zverev, the German who was part of the tour, he was seen and photographed partying in Monte Carlo on Sunday. He went back to Monte Carlo and he was supposed to keep himself in self-quarantine. He in fact had come out with a statement as well, saying that he is sorry that he was part of this tour which has jeopardized tennis's restart endeavor, so to speak. And he said he will observe his quarantine and I don't know what exactly the reasons that prompted him to go out and party, but that's irresponsible behavior too. So when tennis is trying to restart, the economic implications on that sport is huge because of the kind of tournaments that have been scrapped so far. US Open is the major tournament that is trying to stage itself later this year. And many in the tennis fraternity believe that this area tour fiasco would have a very negative impact on players willing to attend that tournament or even stakeholders getting involved in that tournament or even the government giving sanctions for the tournament to be staged. Because US Open, obviously it's a much larger, occasionally much larger tournament, more players would be involved, more support structure around organizing a tournament, more people would be involved in the venue. No matter how close to conduct it, you can't be without a certain level of amount of people being involved in that venue. So that's the larger implication on this because by this behavior, the players, I mean, in the sense it's perfectly fine to organize this charity. The Open is questioning the legitimacy of their motive to organize this or anything of that sort. But they should have been more responsible and more diligent and more organized when they went about this. Because this has jeopardized tennis's cause very badly. Absolutely. And I think in cricket also there's been recent instances. Yeah, so cricket again, it's much closer to home both ways because this cricket is one of the, I mean, cricket is the favorite sport Indians follow. And this has happened across the border in Pakistan. So international cricket is starting this coming week with England playing West Indies in the test series. And the West Indies team is already there. No incidents whatsoever. The team was there a fortnight or so back in England. And they have been training. They isolated themselves for 14 days and they have been kept in a confined facility. They are training and they would be shifting to venues where hotel facilities are there. So the players are not expected to step out and everything would be, I mean, they are following the protocol that probably they borrowed from English Premier League because football has been happening in the UK. And the tour after this, it's Pakistan's tour of England where they will play three test matches and three T20 international. And the team was selected. The selected players were called in by the Pakistan Cricket Board to the main centers Lahore to get tested before they travel for the tour. The team is already there in England. They traveled yesterday. But what happened was when the tests were conducted, 10 players out of the original 20 that was there got positive results. And then a couple of days later, six out of the 10 turned out to be negative. So a confusion happened over there. And primarily the confusion is because, again, the Pakistan Cricket Board didn't follow the systematic way in convening these players. So they should have looked up again at other sporting entities who have restarted action. So when football was starting by the end of May and early June across Europe, Germany to start with and then Spain and England, they started convening their players in a very, I mean, slow and laborious process where they were gotten from their homes and then they were quarantined. And then the training started individually. And then they were training in three or four player batches. And then the combined training happened with the squad. At a much later stage, when everything was sure that nobody else is infected and there's no chance that during training these things will pass on. Instead, the PCV just seems to have just called these players in randomly the top players. And then they just, I mean, I don't know whether the directives were there for the players to observe what all should be observed before they come in. Because it seems that the players now testing positive means that they would have gotten infected in the last few days. And that means that they wouldn't have observed. They would have gotten out of their self quarantine or whatever situation that they were in, probably contained at home. And the moment they stepped up, they would have socialized and it's apparent with the kind of spread that has happened. And secondly, positive and negative tests happening, false positives and false negatives is pretty common in the test for coronavirus. So again, the PCV should have had a protocol of doing a double test before ascertaining whether a player is, before giving out the results and saying these players are positive, these players are negative, but they didn't follow that either. So that again puts a light on the scientific or the systematic manner, I mean lack of systematic manner in which the Pakistan board meant about doing this. Again, it all boils down to responsibility to the sport because cricket, international cricket happening is a very big deal. Pakistan cricket board has been struggling financially despite, I mean, even much before the coronavirus pandemic that way. And international tours happening is very important for them because the kind of broadcast revenue that it could bring, that it could use for all those development activities that has been stalled by the pandemic. And it works for England as well. England are not doing any favors to Pakistan by hosting them. It's an important role for England. And when such instances happen, again, it jeopardizes the entire process of how cricket can come out of this lockdown period and slowly established itself within the parameters, that safety parameters, that is a must at conducting organizing sport. And the whole world is looking at such things and at the lowest level also these protocols and all will be established in the long run so that things happen right from the grassroots at the state level, the national level because otherwise if a faltering happens right at the top where all these facilities are available, then I just don't understand how sport will come out of this at all in the right way. And there is of course also a social angle in the sense that sports persons being somebody, a lot of people in society look up to. There is definitely the question of how such instances are perceived by the people at large. And obviously there are sports persons are also individuals, they have their space and they have their freedom, but they also have a role that they play in society. So there's that angle as well. Exactly. And for any country for that matter, so taking, talking about Pakistan first, again Pakistan cricketers are the preeminent sports persons of that country because cricket is huge there. And so when, and it is possibly the first sport that is coming out, I mean to play, I mean as a national side or even at a local level. So all the youngsters, all the fans, all the people who are there, it's a positive sign that sport is gonna happen. So it's a sign that soon, I mean, see it's very clear that this pandemic and this lockdown and the concerns of safety and all has taken a huge toll on people's morale and psyche. And so seeing the national team play would be something that would give them hope to start with. And then when that process was started out of irresponsible behavior, out of not having a set protocol or whatever, the reason is when these infections happen, they gain, the people are taken back to a much more darker space to start with. And secondly, they're also unsure as to how to keep themselves safe. If at all the players coming out and showing by example that, see this virus is there and we have to live with it, but we can live with it possibly by maintaining a very hygienic and well-set protocol, then that is an example that everybody could follow. So that's not set either. And then there are instances like Alexander's Warray that I mentioned where you just, I mean, can't stop, I mean, what kind of a responsibility is that to the society or to the game or to yourself too, by stepping out and having a party when you were supposed to be quarantined. So it tells a lot and I mean, these are, so it casts a shadow on the entire sport, but then the reality is that these are few sports persons who are erratic, not everybody is, but then the damage is done because the news spreads fast and then people would start having a diminished view of sport and sports persons and also the social responsibility that these sport has towards the larger world. Absolutely, yeah. Thank you so much for talking to us. That's all we have in this episode. Let's talk, we'll be back with the latest news developments of the day tomorrow. Until then, keep watching NewsClick.