‘They will beat me again’: What led to the death of a young man in Jammu village?

For Makhan Din’s family, his last video captures an unimaginable tragedy.

On February 5, 25-year-old Din died by suicide in a remote village of Jammu’s Kathua district – a day after he was detained and interrogated by the police. Minutes before he drank insecticide, he shot a video explaining that he was taking his life because he feared more police torture.

“I swear by Allah and his messenger that I have never seen militants,” Din, who worked as a labour contractor in Himachal Pradesh, said in the video. “I was forced to create a false story because I was subjected to brutal beating [in custody]...When I started lying that I had seen militants…only then did the beating stop.”

On February 4, Din and his father Mohammad Murid had been detained by the police from their house. “We were taken to Billawar police station where both of us were separated from each other,” recalled Murid, a farmer. “They first started torturing me and then I heard Makhan’s cries from some other room.”

While Murid was let go the next morning and asked to “not mention it to anyone”, Din reached home by the afternoon of February 5. “The cops had dropped him near a deserted spot some 6 km...

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