New Delhi, March 24 -- The arrest and death in police custody of P Rajan, a Regional Engineering College, Calicut student, in March 1976 during the internal emergency, symbolised police highhandedness and brutality of the emergency regime throughout the country.

True, the poor, marginalised people of Northern states like Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Bihar and Delhi went through untold misery due to forced sterilisations, illegal demolitions of slums in the name of 'development and beautification' and large-scale arrest and incarceration of political opponents. In Delhi, during the infamous demolition at the Muslim-dominated Turkuman gate, scores of people were crushed and killed under the weight of the bulldozers. Their bod...