the punjab cut

The Punjab Cut
I have referred to Punjab Cut earlier too. Here is a story that tells you all about it. How it is performed and what type of results it produces. You would have read parts of the story in the newspaper. Here is what actually happened. Raji alias Auto Raji was an auto rickshaw driver. Salim and Kannan were his friends. Auto Raji had a pretty wife. Both Salim and Kannan eyed the wife. Once Auto Raji was drunk and ploughed his auto into a sleeping beggar, killing him on the spot. He was arrested and had to spend about two weeks in the prison before he got his bail. His two friends Salim and Kannan helped the pretty wife financially and otherwise when he was in prison. They also contributed to the legal fees that got auto Raji out.
However, within a week of his return, Auto Raji got news that shocked him to the core. Neighbors were talking in whispers that his pretty wife had dispensed special favors to his friends during the time of his imprisonment. That night the three friends had gone out drinking. Once the blood alcohol levels rose to a particular level, Raji started making allegations, which were hotly denied by Salim and Kannan. Kannan was not in a mood to fight because he was feeling guilty. He had seduced his friend’s wife during his absence and it weighed heavily on his mind. He saw tempers rise and did not want to stay there any longer lest he blurted out anything. He left his two friends beside the auto and walked away.
The police arrested him the next morning from his house. Auto Raji’s body was found he next to the auto. His head had been smashed to pulp by a tyre lever removed from the auto rickshaw. As Kannan was the last man to see Raji alive, he was taken straight to the police station and interrogated. Initially he refused to even accept that he had been with the deceased the previous night, but when he got a thorough beating, blurted out the whole truth. He and Salim having a tryst with auto Raji’s wife when he was in prison. Auto Raji’s release from prison. Their drunken session the previous night. Accusations and counter accusations. His leaving the place mid way.
The cops are not trusting types and they gave Kannan a Punjab-Cut to see if they could make him open up further. In Punjab Cut, the accused is made to sit against a wall and his arms are pinned to the sides stretched out and held tight by two cops. Two more cops would stand between the legs and slowly move apart, so that the thighs moved outwards stretching the hip joints out. This movement is called abduction and is restricted to less than forty-five degrees because of the ball and socket of the hip. However, the cops do not stop at this point. They continue to move further apart stretching the hips further. This stretches the medial hip capsule and tears it producing a really severe pain. This Punjab Cut leaves the victim totally unmarked, and bluish purple bruises in the groin appear only three to four days later!
Kannan who described this to me said - Doctor Saar, I had no option but to confess to a murder that I had not done; it was so painful that if they had continued it any further, I would have confessed assassinating mother Teresa and Indra Gandhi. George Bush too, if they had wanted.
All accused who come to the prison claim that they are innocent and thus I took what he told me, with a pinch of salt. But a week later events turned out in such a way that it proved that he was really telling the truth.
The real killer was the other friend Salim, who had absconded after the killing and gone to Madurai. There he was caught in a theft case, and taken to the police station for enquiry. As usual, he too received a Punjab Cut; with a statement - We know what you are hiding. If you want us to stop, tell us the truth.
He did. He told the whole truth about Auto Raji. This also wholly exonerated Kannan. The newspapers picked up the story and the police finally filed a mistake a facts report. Kannan was released and came to me to bid farewell. As he walked out with a wide gait, I told myself that at least this Punjab Cut had been a wasted effort!