Ahmedabad: Five persons moved the Gujarat high court seeking action against nine police officers in Vadodara for alleged custodial torture, parading them in full public view, and thereby committing contempt of court by violating the Supreme Court’s order.The petition was filed by Sufiyan Mansuri, Shanawaz Kureshi, Junaid Sindhi, Anas Kureshi and Sadeka Sindhi. The group was arrested following communal disturbances in Aug 2025, triggered by an incident where eggs were allegedly hurled at a Ganesh procession in the Panigate area during Navratri. They alleged that the nine cops, including Vadodara ACP M P Bhojani and inspector D K Mangroliya, were involved in subjecting them to custodial violence, torture and harassment.In a petition filed through advocate Anand Yagnik, they alleged that the nine cops robbed them of their dignity by parading them in full public view with hands tied with ropes, kneeling down seeking apology with folded hands to the public at large “as an extrajudicial punishment”. The cops exhibited them as a symbol of hegemony by circulating their videos on mass media and social media in the name of reconstruction of crime. The petition stated that the torture inflicted by the police officials on the five applicants “in the form of extrajudicial punishment with an intent of instilling fear and robbing them of their dignity and fundamental rights reflecting an unacceptable faucet of state terrorism as contemplated under the D K Basu case”. The petition termed the cops’ action as disobedience and contemptuous conduct, which constitutes contempt under the provisions of the Contempt of Court Act. The bench of Justice Bhargav Karia and Justice L S Pirzada asked the petitioners’ counsel to supply a copy of the petition to the govt advocate and posted the case for further hearing on Thursday.
