The body of the man who died inside Amherst Street police station on Wednesday night was handed over to his family members on Saturday evening.
Ashok Kumar Singh, who is survived by his wife and three children, died minutes after he entered Amherst Street police station reportedly to return an allegedly stolen mobile phone on Wednesday.
On Saturday evening, officials of the SSKM Hospital and the police handed over Singh’s body to the family members following an order of Calcutta High Court.
A division bench headed by Chief Justice T.S. Sivagnanam said that besides handing over Singh’s body, the police should provide adequate security cover on its journey from the hospital’s morgue to his central Kolkata home and during the subsequent journey to the crematorium.
“Singh’s body was taken to Nimtala Ghat for cremation around 7.30pm after a brief stopover at his house on Patuatola Lane in north Kolkata,” said a senior police officer.
The high court had on Friday asked the police to shift the body of the deceased from the Kolkata police morgue at the Calcutta Medical College and Hospital to the SSKM Hospital morgue and preserve it there.
The body was shifted on Friday evening following court orders.
The high court also asked the city police commissioner to preserve all CCTV footage of Amherst Street police station related to the death.
Early on Saturday, advocate Priyanka Tibrewal moved a petition before the division bench seeking an order asking the police to hand over Singh’s body to his family members.
The lawyer told the court that the police were not handing over the body since the hearing into the case was pending in the court.
The next hearing into the case is scheduled on November 23.
Appearing for the state, a lawyer said the police were ready to hand over the body to the family. There was apprehensions about the law-and-order situation during the cremation, he added.
On Saturday after hearing both sides, the Chief Justice issued an order asking the police to hand over the body to the family.
Singh’s family had alleged police torture.
Friday’s high court order quoted the post-mortem report submitted by the police as saying: “Death was due to the effects of subarachnoid haemorrhage as a sequence of rupture of aneurysm...”
