The brutal custodial death of 27-year-old temple security guard Ajith Kumar in Tamil Nadu last month forced the country to confront an uncomfortable truth: custodial torture is not an aberration, but a systemic feature of policing in India.
According to the autopsy report, there were more than 40 injuries on his body, pointing to sustained and deliberate assault. In a moment of judicial candour, the Madurai bench of the Madras High Court described it as “police-organised crime” and concluded that “a state has killed its own citizen”. That tone is necessary and speaks to the scale of the rot.
The state acted swiftly in the immediate aftermath. Five policemen were arrested, six others were suspended and a judicial inquiry was ordered under strict timelines. The Tamil Nadu government offered compensation: ₹5 lakh and a government job for Ajith’s brother, and a parcel of land. The case was also handed over to the CBI.
Yet, for all the official gestures, Tamil Nadu’s record on custodial violence remains deeply troubling. Between 2016 and 2021, there were 478 custodial deaths, with perpetrators not convicted in the vast majority of cases. In 2022 alone, at least 12 more cases surfaced. The accused cops behind the infamous 2023 Ambasamudram custodial torture case, in which detainees were reportedly assaulted with iron rods and had their teeth smashed, are on active duty.
The national figures paint an even grimmer picture. According to the National Human Rights Commission, there were over 2,300 custodial deaths—2,152 in judicial custody and 155 in police custody—in India in 2021-22. Over the last six years, Uttar Pradesh alone has reported 2,630 custodial deaths, the highest in the country, while Tamil Nadu recorded the highest cases among the southern states. Overall, there were 11,650 deaths in custody in India between 2016 and 2022, a staggering figure for a democracy.
What is most disturbing is the near-total absence of justice. A 2023 analysis of NHRC and government data reveals between 2017 and 2022, only 345 magisterial inquiries were ordered nationwide into custodial deaths, resulting in just 123 arrests. Charges were filed only in 79 cases. There were no convictions. In Tamil Nadu alone, 39 such inquiries were conducted during this period, none leading to conviction. The legal machinery, it seems, is built to shield the perpetrators, not to deliver justice.
The situation is no better in other states. In Chhattisgarh, the high court recently awarded ₹2 lakh as compensation to the mother of a young man beaten to death in custody—an act of redress, not deterrence. In Jharkhand, widespread protests erupted after 35-year-old Meraj Ansari was allegedly tortured to death by a cybercrime unit. These incidents, like countless others, are quickly absorbed into the collective amnesia of public discourse, until the next body surfaces.
Custodial violence in India is not merely a law and order issue: it is fundamentally linked to caste, class and community. NHRC data reveals that 71 percent of custodial deaths between 1996 and 2018 involved detainees from poor or vulnerable backgrounds. The over-policing of Dalit and Adivasi communities is no accident—it is rooted in the deeply hierarchical nature of Indian law enforcement.
Ajith Kumar’s death is no aberration—it followed the institutional script. Taken on mere suspicion, tortured in custody and cremated with alarming haste, his erasure illustrates the brutal efficiency with which the state can extinguish the lives of those on the margins. It marks the intersection of economic precarity, social discrimination, and unchecked impunity.
This custodial death crisis demands more than reform—it requires a rupture. Change must begin at arrest: enforceable detention protocols, constant judicial oversight, recorded interrogations and medical checks must be mandatory. Every custodial death should trigger an FIR and an independent probe, not an internal review. Fast-track courts must replace bureaucratic delay. A public, disaggregated database and regular audits by SC/ST and civil society groups are essential to transparency and oversight.
Justice must also be reparative. Victims’ families deserve immediate compensation and long-term support. Police training must be rooted in constitutional rights and anti-caste ethics. Institutions like the NHRC need prosecutorial powers and procedural sabotage must attract criminal liability.
A democracy cannot sustain itself when fear supplants trust in its guardians. The right to life is not earned through compliance, nor does dignity expire at the threshold of custody. Ajith Kumar’s death exposes a state too willing to obscure the truth with silence. Without systemic reform, independent oversight, and a fundamental reimagining of policing, such tragedies will remain fleeting ruptures, memorialised not as reckonings, but as forgotten footnotes.
India is at a moral and constitutional inflection point. It can do nothing and aid the normalisation of custodial violence, or it can reaffirm, with clarity and conviction, that the deprivation of liberty must never entail the forfeiture of life. The true measure of a republic lies not in its indulgence of the powerful, but in its unwavering commitment to the dignity and protection of the powerless. Justice, if it is to retain meaning beyond rhetoric, must extend to Ajith Kumar and to the countless others whose lives are extinguished without record, recourse or remembrance.
Amal Chandra | Policy analyst and National Coordinator, Students for Liberty (East India)
(Views are personal)
(Tweets @ens_socialis)