Outrage after Indian police dump corpse in canal

Police in one of India’s most lawless states have been caught on camera throwing the body of a road accident victim into a canal, triggering outrage on Monday.

The video, which has gone viral, shows three policemen in the state of Bihar carrying the bloodied victim to a bridge barrier before levering him over the edge into the waters below, as bystanders looked on.

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The video has garnered more than 800,000 views since being posted on Sunday.

Police in India are widely regarded as corrupt and ineffective, and Bihar — which has a population of more than 100 million people — is one of the country’s poorest and least developed states.

A senior police officer of Muzaffarpur district told AFP his men “only threw the lower half” of the man into the water as it was badly crushed by a speeding truck and could not be salvaged.

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“It was the body of an elderly man who is yet to be identified. The upper half was sent for post-mortem but the lower half was badly mangled so they threw it in the canal,” said Rakesh Kumar.

“It was a big mistake. We have suspended the three policemen who can be seen in the video.”

After the video went viral, police hurriedly fished out some body parts from the canal, a local media report said.

One user on X, formerly known as Twitter, asked “Are they police or savage beasts?”

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Another wrote: “It seems that humanity and morality has died among people these days.”