India: Covid-19 lockdown 2020
-- Punishment of offenders by police: One more clip. New!
Date: September 2020
Duration: 50 seconds
During the global Covid-19 pandemic that started in early 2020, the governments of many countries imposed curfews or lockdowns on their populations. In addition, the wearing of facemasks was widely mandated. As you would expect, the authorities often struggled to enforce these temporary rules. India was one country where the police in many places either were tasked with rounding up and punishing transgressors or perhaps simply took it upon themselves to do so.
In many cases this took the form of ad hoc corporal punishment, typically administered in city streets in full public view, using the long canes ("lathi") that Indian police always seem to have at hand. Methods and approaches varied considerably: sometimes the culprits (almost always male) were forced to assume a "murgha" or bent-over position to receive their strokes across the posterior, while in other cases the procedures adopted were much more random.
A substantial number of these events were captured on video.
This video shows four youths being vigorously caned in quite a formal manner by a group of police officers in an unknown location. Upon standing up, they are seen to be in pain, with much rubbing of buttocks. At one point (see picture above) three of them are all rubbing their backsides at the same moment. They are then required to bend over again; we don't know whether there were further strokes after the filming ended.
In the background are heard, but not seen, some females shrieking with laughter, presumably at the young men's embarrassing plight.
Other countries where public corporal punishment was deployed during the pandemic in 2020 and 2021 include Ghana, Indonesia, Malaysia, Mexico, Myanmar, Pakistan, and Peru.
HERE IS THE CLIP:
