CHENNAI: On a cold night in January, Aseervatham was riding through the lanes of West Tambaram, hunting for a locality called Kuppaimedu. There were seven such places scattered across the area, and the darkness seemed determined to keep their secrets. At one point, nearly 50 stray dogs chased his bike, their barks echoing off the walls like a chorus of warning. He pressed on through the night until he finally found the woman he was looking for, near a crematorium behind a garbage dump.
Priya was living in a hut with her five children. Her son, Gokul Sri, had died at a government observation home in Chengalpattu in 2022, a death that was initially recorded as having been caused by diarrhoea. Questions remained, and members of the Joint Action Against Custodial Torture (JAACT) were trying to trace a family that, according to human rights defender and the collective’s acting secretary, I Aseervatham, had slipped out of the case.
In June 2020, the deaths of P Jayaraj and his son, J Bennicks, in police custody triggered outrage across India. In Tamil Nadu, this became a catalyst for a group of social activists and human rights defenders to come together and form JAACT, says Aseervatham, reiterating that the collective doesn’t have a single founder.
“Collectively, we got justice for 40 families affected by custodial torture.” Members documented the family’s circumstances and questioned the events surrounding the boy’s death. Their fact-finding efforts and protests were followed by the arrest of seven people, including the superintendent of the observation home.
JAACT pursued rehabilitation alongside accountability and helped the family secure a free government house worth Rs 16 lakh and a compensation of Rs 10 lakh from the Chief Minister’s Public Relief Fund. It also argued, citing various High Court and Supreme Court rulings, that Gokul Sri’s caste should be considered in the context of his upbringing rather than determined solely by his father’s caste.
Priya now receives a monthly pension of Rs 18,000, while her eldest son has secured a government job. “This is what human rights work should look like,” Aseervatham says. “Not just an arrest. Not just compensation, but helping a family rebuild their lives after the case disappears from public attention.”
But not every case allows that. In Villupuram, JAACT learnt of Raja’s death 40 days after he was allegedly tortured during interrogation in 2025 and sent home. Aseervatham was present for the second postmortem that lasted for six hours. But the cigarette burns and boot marks his wife had described were no longer visible.
For two days, Aseervatham could not eat or sleep. It was not the first time the work had followed him home.
He was present during the Thoothukudi police firing, where he says he saw the first person being shot. He also remembers standing through a forest postmortem conducted days after the man, who belongs to an indigenous/tribal community from the Tiruvannamalai district, was killed.
Aseervatham once ran a signboard business. His entry into the human rights movement came when he was asked to create a prison backdrop for an anti-torture programme, which became the event itself. Conversations with human rights activist Henri Tiphagne drew him deeper into the movement. But it was the killing of 20 Tamil men in the Seshachalam forest area of Andhra Pradesh in 2015 that became a defining point in his journey.
Aseervatham led a six-member team into the forest and gathered evidence that challenged the encounter narrative. “After JAACT began taking up cases regularly, it reflected in society,” he says. “Now, even a small act of torture by the police draws public condemnation.” But condemnation, he argues, is not enough. JAACT wants human rights to be discussed in the Legislative Assembly and embedded in government policy.
Six years on, from Sathankulam to Chengalpattu and now to the forests along the Karnataka border, JAACT refuses to let torture disappear into the shadows. In the quiet victories and stubborn persistence of memory when evidence fades, the collective carries forward a simple, unyielding promise — that no family should have to search through the night alone and that justice, once found, should never be allowed to slip away again.
(If you or your family are seeking justice in a case involving custodial torture, you can contact JAACT at +91 99943 68571.)
(Edited by Divya Ramkumar)