The State Human Rights Commission (SHRC) on June 24, 2025, directed the TN government to pay a compensation of Rs 50,000 to V Priyadharshini, a complainant, and recover it from K Santhamoorthi for violating her human rights when he was the Inspector of C2 Race Course police station in Coimbatore.
The order passed by SHRC member V Kannadasan, which directed the government to initiate disciplinary proceedings against Santhamoorthi, quoted Section 58 of the Police Act, 2006, on the social responsibilities of the police.
Priyadharshini had approached the police with a complaint against her father and brother of criminal intimidation and use of filthy language. Instead of conducting an impartial inquiry, the Inspector sided with the accused and intimidated her.
The mandate of the police is to protect and uphold the dignity of people. Article 14 of our Constitution ensures every person the right of equality before the law and equal protection of the laws.
India is a signatory to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which recognises right to life, liberty and security of everyone and says, “No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment”.
The Supreme Court and the various high courts have repeatedly issued guidelines to the police on how to treat people humanely. Yet, we read and, now with the visual media, see how brutal the police force is in its day-to-day duties.
Maintaining law and order presupposes wielding disproportionate power to disperse crowds. Despite various guidelines for crowd dispersal and even after punitive action in a few instances where excessive and unwarranted force was used, the police have not learnt any lesson.
Crime investigation is done without resorting to scientific methods. Third-degree methods of brutal and unimaginable force are used against persons in custody to extract confessions, which the police expect from every accused.
This is more so when the person in custody belongs to the oppressed, economically and socially deprived classes. The custodial deaths of P Jeyaraj and J Benix at Sathankulam in Thoothukudi district in 2020 and of B Ajithkumar in Sivaganga district on June 28 this year have caught public attention and drawn the Madras High Court’s spontaneous scrutiny. Yet, not a single policeman has been punished so far for custodial deaths, which are cold-blooded murders.
It is imperative to ensure the guidelines issued by the Supreme Court in the DK Basu case to ensure protection of persons in custody be followed in letter and spirit.
It is high time that police reforms were effected seriously. The law and order police should be different from those investigating crimes. Police on duty should wear body cameras, and this should not be seen as curtailing their powers.
Besides deterring them from using excessive force, the cameras will provide a reliable means to prove their innocence if complaints are raised.
Functioning of CCTV cameras in all police stations should be ensured. Oversight committees for CCTV cameras should have respectable members of the locality, who inspect and view the recordings, which ought to be safely kept, without prior notice.
Police reforms laid down by the SC in 1996 in the Prakash Singh case, that aimed to insulate the police from political interference and make them more accountable to the public, should be implemented.
India should ratify the UN Convention Against Torture.
A special legislation to deal with custodial violence and ensure timebound criminal prosecution of those committing custodial torture is needed, without which there will be no deterrence.
As of now, whenever custodial violence or death attracts public attention, an administrative inquiry is initiated, the victim’s family is silenced with some compensation, lower-level police personnel are suspended or even arrested.
But soon, they are reinstated with back wages and continuity of service and even conferred medals.
In such a scenario, humane, just and civilised treatment at the hands of the police will be a distant mirage.
NO LESSONS LEARNT
Despite various guidelines for crowd dispersal and even after punitive action in a few instances where excessive and unwarranted force was used, the police have not learnt any lesson
(The author is an advocate and rights activist based in Chennai)