A protest was held outside Surathkal police station in Mangaluru on Tuesday after Somanath, a man booked in connection with an alleged beach incident, died by suicide while police were investigating the case. Protesters brought his body to the station and demanded action against the couple whose complaint had led to the case.
According to the police case reported by Deccan Chronicle, Somanath and others had been booked after a complaint that they allegedly troubled a couple visiting a beach within Surathkal police station limits on Monday. The offences invoked in the case carried a punishment of less than three years, following which police served Somanath a notice as part of the investigation.
Somanath subsequently died by suicide on Tuesday morning. A suicide note was also reportedly found, although the contents of the note were not provided in the report. The circumstances of the death and any claims made in the note were not independently detailed in the available account.
Later in the evening, a group gathered outside Surathkal police station with Somanath’s body. The protesters alleged that the woman who had lodged the complaint and her boyfriend were responsible for his death. They demanded that an FIR be registered against the couple. Those allegations were made by the protesters and were not established in the report as police findings.
Mangaluru City Police Commissioner Sudheer Kumar Reddy said the protesters had been told that they could submit a complaint. “We told them that they could submit a complaint and that a case would be registered and investigated if they want,” the Commissioner said, according to the report.
The protest affected traffic near the police station. After the protesters left with the body, traffic movement was restored, the report said. The incident places the focus on how complaints, police notices and demands for counter-cases are handled during an active investigation, while the available account does not state whether a separate FIR was subsequently registered against the couple.
