BENGALURU: The death of Satish Kumar alias ‘Sketch Manja’ and the “explanations” which the police have been giving” “to cover up the death” is nothing but a reflection of how “police in Karnataka often bypass arrest procedures and torture to death suspects in custody,” say members of the State Human Rights Commission.
The commission expressed serious concern over increasing cases of custodial deaths in the state and senior police officers’ “attitude” towards such cases. A member of the commission said, “Instead of holding the policemen responsible to account, authorities have stalled reforms needed to build a more rights-respecting force.”
SHRC member Rupak Kumar Dutta said, “Each time such a case happens, we notice that there are tremendous loopholes in the way the police conduct arrests to how interrogations happen.”“In just a span of six months, there have been four custodial deaths in the city and neighbouring districts,” said a senior member from the commission.
Another member added, “I have seen cases where children of the accused come crying to us saying, ‘my father cried saying these policemen will kill me. But unfortunately by the time we take some action, the death would have already happened.”
Senior police officers know how to ‘handle’ such cases by remaining distant from it. “They just wash their hands off the case by either suspending some low ranking officials like Sub Inspectors or constables in the station,” said Dutta.
According to the SHRC, forms of torture include severe beatings with boots and belts, sometimes suspending people from their wrists. Autopsy reports examined by Human Rights officials have reportedly shown injuries with blunt force trauma.
“Many of them try to give statements like ‘he was a hardcore criminal and refused to confess so we had to use some force’, ‘he died of heart attack’, ‘he committed suicide’ etc. Even though we have a different body which will investigated the matter, punishments are really slow and prosecutions don’t happen quick,” said another officer.
To ensure accountability for police abuses, Indian law requires a judicial magistrate to conduct an inquiry into every death in police custody. Every case is also supposed to be reported to the Rights panel. Commission rules call for the autopsy to be filmed and the report to be prepared according to a model form.
A senior police officer said: “We know human rights panel has become strict and we do follow all procedures mentioned under the law. We even carry out fair departmental enquiries and cooperate with agencies like CID by furnishing only true information.”