Did the police lie about constable Subhash Tomar’s death, nay “murder”, to take life out of the anti-rape protests at India Gate?

Did the government insinuate the same to clear the Rajpath and Vijay Chowk, and by default cleanse its face of eggs that flew thick and fast over the last few days?

And did the media corroborate with both by zooming off completely the protests on Tuesday and not properly reporting in Wednesday’s papers the story of extreme police highhanded, in which a group of teenaged schoolgirls were detained illegally for hours at Parliament Street police station, roughed up in lock-up and warned against taking any further part in the protests?

It is sad that such questions should be asked a day after the Delhi Police constable’s funeral but these are questions that smack of a conspiracy, pardon the Mamata Banerjee-esque parlance.

If Delhi Police commissioner Neeraj Kumar did not know the details of constable Tomar’s death, why did he have to put in the claim in a televised media conference on Christmas day afternoon that “doctors have told us Tomar sustained internal injuries in his chest, neck and stomach that eventually resulted in his death"?

But in the same breath, he also said, "Only the postmortem report, which is awaited, can tell the exact cause of death."

So if what he said not the “exact cause of death”, what was he trying to do, giving out an imprecise cause of death to the whole nation?

According to reports in many sections of the media, including some news channels which on Tuesday stopped beaming the protests live from Jantar Mantar, Tomar might not have been “murdered”, as police’s FIR, changed after the constable’s death, asserts.

An ANI report quoted on firstpost.com says Dr PS Sidhu of Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital, where Tomar was admitted after collapsing at India gate on Sunday, has said the constable had “no major external injury marks when he was brought to the hospital” (read the updates/report here).

Dr Sidhu told Hindustan Times that though Tomar had a few broken ribs "that (ribcage fractures) could have happened when we were giving him CPR (cardio-pulmonary resuscitation)”.

A journalism student who claims to be a witness to Tomar’s “collapse” has also said, "He wasn't trampled by the protesters, he wasn't assaulted. He just collapsed while walking.”

Little wonder, then, that Delhi Police has transferred the investigation from its New Derlhi district to the Crime Branch.

So did the police speak with multiple “doctors”, as Neeraj Kumar put it, at RML? Did they get a different version than what Dr Sidhu has told the news agency? And is it a regular ritual for police chief Neeraj Kumar to hold media conferences and give out inexact/imprecise details (according to his own admission) in cases that should logically be under investigation? What was he, and the police, trying to achieve out of all this?

Just as, what were Delhi chief minister Sheila Dikshit and minister of state for home affairs RPN Singh doing at Tomar’s funeral when no minister visited RML hospital when the constable fought for his life in the ICU for nearly three days, as his son told news channels after his death?

And within hours of his death, what were the police on Parliament Street, with jurisdiction over areas that became suddenly inaccessible for the average citizens for three days, doing by arresting a bunch of teen girls? Are the police retaliating? If we go by their boss’s words (“collateral damage”, which is straight out of Army lexicon), were these girls collateral damage in constable Tomar’s death?

Were the cops out to avenge Tomar’s death? Or were they trying to scare the daylight of young people who even thought of protesting?

Lastly, what prompted this sudden media silence on this episode? This was not just a case of police highhandedness; it was, if events reported by a section of the media (and not the whole) are true, a case of crime. And the criminals were in uniform this time.

Are we all so intent on nipping the protests that we will stop reporting, and reacting, to general crime stories?