Press Trust Of India
Washington/New Delhi, Feb 12: India has taken serious exception to an incident in the US in which a 57-year-old citizen was manhandled by a cop for no apparent reason. The man has been left partially paralysed. The incident is widely seen as an instance of racial profiling and police excess.
In the shocking incident, a US police officer questioned the man, now on a US visit, while he was taking a walk in a public place in Alabama, and then aggressively forced him on the ground, resulting in injuries. The family is set to file a lawsuit. Rights organisations saw the incident as “police brutality” and “racial profiling”. Sureshbhai Patel is currently undergoing treatment for fused vertebrae. Patel arrived in the US two weeks ago to stay with his son in the suburb of Huntsville. One day, while walking down the sidewalk in the area, he was stopped by a policeman after a call went to Madison Police saying, “Someone is suspiciously walking on the streets looking into garages of homes.”
The scene went like this: When the cop confronted the man, he did not know how to reply to him in English. As he said, “No English,” he also inserted a hand in one of his pants pockets. The cop then abruptly forced him on the ground, face-down, in an ‘escalated’ action, leaving him “bloody and partially paralyzed”.
Sureshbhai’s son Chirag Patel said, “Dad went for a walk in my community, where everybody walks and it is a sidewalk not any body’s property. He did not know English. He tried to tell them in broken English that he’s walking and he told his house number. Still police took him to ground.”, he said.
Hank Sherrod, counsel representing the Patel family, told AL.com that the officer escalated to violence without any provocation.