In the name of the law | Custodial torture and deaths in Uttar Pradesh

Tapeshwari Devi recounts the night of October 25 with sadness and anger. Her son, Mohit Pandey, 32, had got into a minor dispute with their neighbour, Adesh Kumar, over a few thousand rupees. At 7 p.m., the police arrived and whisked Mohit away to the Chinhat police station in Lucknow.

Mohit, a manufacturer and supplier of school uniforms, had been detained for ‘breaching the peace’ under Section 352 of the Bharatiya Nyay Sahita (BNS), according to the police. When his brother, Shobha Ram Pandey, went to the police station to enquire about Mohit, he was also detained, for being intoxicated.

The next day, a CCTV video, allegedly from the lock-up at Chinhat police station, appeared in the public domain. It showed a man, who relatives say is Mohit, crumpled on the floor. Seven other inmates, including his brother, were seen rubbing his shoulders and shouting for help. At the end of the 77-second video, the inmates beg the police for help and Shobha Ram hands a bottle of water to his brother.

Later that day, Devi’s phone rang. “The caller told me that Mohit had been sent to Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital as his health had deteriorated,” she says, her eyes welling up. Devi rushed to the hospital only to learn that her son was no more.

The medical staff and the police apparently told her that the chief medical superintendent of the hospital, Vikram Singh, had confirmed that Mohit had been brought dead around 3 p.m.

Devi was shocked. “They killed him, and for what? Over such a minor issue,” she says.

Mohit is survived by his mother, wife, and three children. His family staged a protest outside the hospital for two days, claiming that the police had beaten him up, which had led to his death. They said that the police took him to hospital so that the torture that he faced in custody would never be known.

Shobha Ram, who was released the day Mohit died, describes the police station as “filthy” and says they were treated badly. “When I asked for water, the police did not give it to us. They abused us. Mohit’s health deteriorated that night,” he recalls. Shobha Ram alleges that his brother died due to custodial torture.

Devi claims that no action was taken against the neighbour, Adesh. “It was due to the influence of Adesh’s uncle, a political leader, that Mohit underwent such torture,” she alleges.

A dubious distinction for Uttar Pradesh

According to the United Nations, custodial deaths refer to the deaths of individuals while in custody of a law enforcement agency or a court. They represent among the gravest violations of human rights in societies governed by the rule of law. Such deaths may be directly or indirectly associated with events that transpire during the individual’s confinement.

According to data shared by the Government of India in the Lok Sabha in July 2022, Uttar Pradesh ranked first in the number of custodial deaths in 2021-22, recording 501 out of 2,544 such deaths across the country. West Bengal accounted for the second-highest number (257 deaths).

“Many custodial violence cases get buried under the carpet. Only cases that get thrust into the limelight or are scrutinised by the media lead to action or punishment,” says Gajendra Singh Yadav, an anti-torture activist and lawyer, who filed a complaint with the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) over Mohit’s death.

For instance, in June, a court in Sitapur convicted three police constables for abetment of suicide and illegal detention and awarded 10 years of rigorous imprisonment to each of them in a two decade-old case relating to the custodial death of a Dalit man.

Mohit’s family visited the residence of Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath on October 28. Adityanath directed officials to provide them an ex-gratia compensation of ₹10 lakh, housing, free education for the children, and access to various government schemes. Adityanath, who has repeatedly said that U.P. was an anarchy under the Samajwadi Party government and that he would ensure law and order, also assured the family that those responsible for Mohit’s death would face strict punishment.

Later, Devi registered a First Information Report (FIR) against Ashwani Kumar Chaturvedi, the station house officer of Chinhat; Adesh; and unidentified police personnel under Sections 103(1) (relating to charges of murder) and 61(2) (relating to criminal conspiracy) of the BNS.

Before Mohit, it was Aman

Aman Gautam, 28, used to do electric work for daily wages. His sister, Sudha Gautam, remembers the night of October 11 when he was sitting at Ambedkar Park in Sector 8 of the Vikas Nagar locality in Lucknow. That was the night he died.

The U.P. police said in a statement that following reports of gambling activities, they landed at the park and took him into custody. They claim that while he was on the way to the station, Aman’s condition deteriorated. When he was taken to Lohia hospital, he was pronounced dead.

“He died due to torture by the police in the van. He was severely beaten by them,” Sudha alleges. She describes the incident as a “conspiracy”, as another man, Sonu Bansal, who was taken into custody, was unharmed.

“While we faced a lathi charge when we protested outside the Vikas Nagar police station, no case of murder was registered against the accused police personnel,” she says. They demanded a case be registered relating to murder and criminal conspiracy against the officers. However, a case was registered under Section 105 (culpable homicide not amounting to murder) of the BNS and Sections 3(1)(d) and 3(2)(v) of the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989, against four policemen.

The family alleges that while in the Chinhat death case, the government provided compensation, housing, free education, and government benefits to Mohit’s family, they offered little help in Aman’s case despite repeated assurances.

“Only Lucknow East MLA, O.P. Srivastava, provided ₹1 lakh as ‘help’,” Sudha says. “Where will we go? We are Dalit. So, this is the treatment we get,” she says. Sudha is distraught but worries more than anything else about Aman’s four-year-old daughter.

A basket of failures

Mohammad Haider Rizvi, an advocate at the Allahabad High Court and a human rights activist, says there are many reasons for the high number of custodial deaths in U.P.: the “lack of competence of law-enforcement agencies in investigating a crime, the pressure they face from their superiors, and the threats they receive of getting suspended or removed from the field if they do not ‘show results.’” The other reason, he contends, is the “failure of human rights organisations to address the scourge.”

Yadav, the anti-torture activist, says the U.P. government has emboldened the police with the aim of maintaining law and order. This, he believes, has contributed to extra-judicial violence. For instance, just months after coming to power in 2017, Adityanath declared that his government would bulldoze the houses of those who even considered perpetuating crimes against women or against marginalised sections of society. “Such measures lead to a regressive approach by the police in dealing with suspects,” says Yadav.

In the run-up to the Jharkhand Assembly elections, Adityanath appealed to the people to vote in a government that will eradicate the mafia, like the “U.P. model” had. He was welcomed in Koderma, where the rally was held, by 11 bulldozers. He said, “Before 2017, mafia groups roamed freely with pride, but since the bulldozers began their work, even the most notorious people have fled U.P. Mafia groups involved in mining, forests, animals, organized crime, liquor, and land have vanished from the State like horns from a donkey’s head.”

To make matters more difficult for victims and their families, the NHRC and the State Human Rights Commissions (SHRCs) are primarily recommendatory in nature. The NHRC and SHRCs have neither the power to punish violators of human rights nor to award any relief of any kind to victims. Their recommendations are not binding on the government. “These groups have become ornamental organisations and a haven for retired judges and bureaucrats,” believes Rizvi.

Sociologists say a culture of unchecked power within law enforcement is also a factor. “In U.P., the narrative is that the state is extremely powerful and will crush people who do wrong. That mindset is seen in the police force in the State too,” says D.R. Sahu, the head of the sociology department at the University of Lucknow.

Rules and no implementation

In an attempt to curb incidents of custodial deaths and harassment in police custody, U.P. director general of police, Prashant Kumar, issued comprehensive guidelines in July to all district police chiefs and field officers of the State. The guidelines state that an inquiry should be conducted to ascertain an individual’s health status before they are taken to the police station; that a suspect should be brought in for questioning only after the police station in-charge is informed about it; that if a suspect’s health deteriorates in police custody, the entire sequence of events should be photographed and videographed; that medical facilities should be provided to them in such a scenario; and that only an investigation officer or the police station in-charge should interrogate the suspect.

“But the problem is not with the rules,” says Sulkhan Singh, former DGP of U.P. “It is with implementation. India ranks 79 out of 142 in the Rule of Law Index 2024. It was 57 in 2015. This statistic reveals the real picture.” The Rule of Law Index is published every year by the World Justice Project, a Washington-based organisation that works to build awareness and stimulate action to advance the rule of law worldwide.

On some other crime-related parameters too, U.P.’s performance is dismal. In the latest (2022) report of the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), the State recorded the highest number of crimes against women (65,743 cases such as rape, murder, kidnapping, murder after rape, and gang rape).

No anti-torture laws

India lacks specific laws against torture. The Prevention of Torture Bill, 2022, tabled in the Lok Sabha by E.T. Mohammad Basheer, aimed to prevent custodial torture and ensure that compensation is awarded to victims and that erring public officials are liable for punishment. “Sadly there is no hope that this will get passed,” says Rizvi.

Critics of the BNS say the police themselves investigate cases of custodial torture, which is why there are such few convictions.

Yadav says he cannot forget the day when Ajay Yadav, a labourer from Jaunpur, visited him in Prayagraj. “He was so broken, he was ready to sell all his ancestral land and cattle to get justice for his brother, who was killed while being tortured by the police,” he says.

The case dates to February 2021 when Ajay’s younger brother, Krishna Yadav alias Pujari Yadav, died. Yadav, the activist, persued the case in the High Court, pushing for a probe by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI). He says, “The probe unearthed facts about how the torture of the deceased was planned. Initially, the role of nine police personnel come to the fore; then, more policemen came under the radar. For nine months, the accused escaped the arrest warrant. But then they were arrested and have been in prison for more than a year.” The policemen were booked under various sections of the Indian Penal Code, including 302 (murder).

However, this is an exception and not the norm. Between 2001 and 2020, more than 1,800 people died in police custody across India, but only 26 policemen were convicted, according to the NCRB’s annual Crime in India report.

Although India signed the United Nations Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman and Degrading Treatment or Punishment on October 14, 1997, it has not ratified it.

In its 113th report, the Law Commission of India recommended an amendment to the Indian Evidence Act, 1872. It said that in case of custodial injuries, if there is evidence, the court may presume that the injury was caused by the police who had custody of that person during that period. The Supreme Court of India, in the case of Dilip K. Basu v. State of West Bengal and Others (1997), reiterated the concerns relating to custodial interrogation and laid down guidelines for the police. It prohibited the police from using third-degree methods during investigation and interrogation of accused individuals, called for giving the police training and orientation, and emphasised basic human values.

The families of both Aman and Mohit are poor. Sudha says Aman is the fourth sibling she has lost. “I cry for not just his child but also my sister-in-law. She doesn’t have a job. How will she manage? For Dalits like us, the trauma is endless,” she says.

mayank.kumar@thehindu.co.in