CHENNAI: “They are going to kill me. Save me,” shouted the young man at a railway gate keeper at Mottanampatti village in Madurai, as he was picked up by a nine-member police team six years ago. His alleged crime was rather petty, drinking in a public place, recalled Sasi Kumar, the younger brother of M Senthil Kumar.
“A day later, we were informed that Senthil (only 31 years old) had died of a heart attack at Vedasandur Government Hospital,” said Sasi, speaking at the release of a report ‘Bound by brotherhood: India’s failure to end killings in police custody’ by Human Rights Watch here on Monday. The case is still pending at a session court in Dindigul.
Senthil Kumar’s case was one among the 17 cases that the NGO, Human Rights Watch, probed. The instances revealed that the police did not follow proper procedures while arresting the victims, rendering them all the more vulnerable to abuse.
According to the report, released by People’s Watch, a programme unit of the Tamil Nadu Centre for Promotion of Social Concerns, at least 591 persons died in police custody across the country between 2010 and 2015.
“In most cases, such deaths are reported while the victim is being taken to hospital. It is often very hard to prove how the victim died, as police officials are keen on shielding their colleagues,” said Henri Tiphagne, Executive Director, People’s Watch, pointing out that the police claim the cause of death to be suicide, illness or natural causes. The challenge for human rights activists is to collect proper evidence, he added.
He also urged that the State legal aid should be proactive and the victims’ families who face threat should be given protection.
Another important aspect is to ensure that the mandatory procedure of producing a suspect before a magistrate within 24 hours of arrest, a guideline that is normally ignored by police in India.
“Police in our country will believe that beating suspects to confess is unacceptable only after officers are prosecuted for torture,” said Meenakshi Ganguly, South Asia director at Human Rights Watch.
The activists also noted that most of the victims’ kin are not aware of what the charges for arrest and the place of detention.
“The new rules effective from 2010 under which a judicial magistrate must investigate custodial deaths has only resulted in confusion, as their investigation report is not submitted to anyone anywhere. They keep the report confidential and with themselves. In such a situation, the question of justice continues to take a back seat,” lamented Tiphagne.