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Custodial torture should be eliminated completely
Zafar Bhat. Dated: 2/9/2018 10:45:41 AM
Zafar Bhat
Jammu, Feb 8
Custodial torture has become a common phenomenon and a routine police practice of interrogation these days. It causes the momentary public uproar but once the incident fades away from the public everything is forgotten.
Particularly, the magnitude of police custodial torture is evinced by the reported incident of Wednesday in Janipur.
However, According to data released by the National Crime Records Bureau’s Crime in India 2016 report, there were 16 deaths in police custody in the Maharastra State last year. Of those, eight died before the police produced them before court to obtain their formal custody. Only Haryana and Madhya Pradesh had deaths in police custody in double figures, with 11 each.
Whereas, concerning about the agony of arrested person in custodial investigation, the Supreme Court had laid down that whenever a person is arrested by the police without warrant, he must be immediately informed of the grounds of his arrest and in case of every arrest it must immediately be known to the arrested person that he is entitled to apply for bail.
Moreover, whenever a person is arrested by the police and taken to the lock-up, the police will immediately give intimation of the fact of such arrest to the nearest Legal Aid Committee and such Legal Aid committee will take immediate steps for the purpose of providing legal assistant in the arrested person at State-level cost provided he is willing to accept with legal assistance.
Therefore, it is emphasized the need to organize special strategies “to prevent and punish brutality of police methodology, otherwise the credibility of the Rule of Law would deteriorated. Pertinently, whatever may be the justification for the institutionalization of custodial torture, the developing human rights jurisprudence demands that this dangerous practice should be eliminated completely.