India’s custodial deaths continue amid lack of accountability

Family members of a 32-year-old man blocked trains by placing his dead body on the tracks after he had died in police custody in a village next to India’s highly militarised border with Pakistan in Jammu and Kashmir. Sunil Verma was arrested on February 3 on charges of allegedly smuggling heroin in his car while driving in the border area of Hiranagar near Jammu city. But three days later, police told his family that Mr Verma had hanged himself inside the station’s washroom using his scarf – an identical plot of most unexplained deaths at Indian police stations. His family rejected the police claims and accused them of torture in custody, leading to his death. They went out on to the streets the following day with his body that the family said bore torture marks, such as missing fingernails. The protesting family refused to cremate him unless the police officers involved in the case were charged with “murder”. “The police beat him up and killed him … we want a judicial inquiry into his death,” his brother, a paramilitary soldier, told a local news channel. Authorities have rejected the family’s allegations. Indian police are often accused of custodial abuse and brutal violence against those arrested, mostly to extract confessions or solve crimes. The South Asian nation has the highest number of custodial deaths, both police and judicial, in the world but conviction rates against the alleged perpetrators remains the lowest. Nearly 1,900 people have been killed in police custody in the past two decades, according to government figures that experts say is a massive underestimate. But only 26 policemen have been convicted over the deaths, a glaring reflection of the failing justice system when it involves state institutions. The Indian government said 151 people died in custody in 2021, with northern Uttar Pradesh topping the list with 12. But many, like Mohammad Altaf, 22, who mysteriously died in police custody, remain missing from the list. The daily wage labourer from Kasganj was detained in November over allegations that he had kidnapped a Hindu woman with whom he was in a relationship. A day after Altaf’s arrest, his family was told by local journalists that he was taken to a hospital though police initially refused to share his whereabouts, his lawyer Kumail Haider said. Police eventually informed Altaf’s family that they found his body hanging lifeless inside the bathroom after he had used his jacket's hood drawstring to kill himself. Police claimed he was suffering from depression and had taken his own life by hanging. But his family challenged the official account of a 5 feet 6 man hanging himself from a 2ft-tall water post. The family have filed a petition in the Allahabad High Court pleading that the policemen involved be charged with murder, as well as compensation of 10 million rupees ($132,606). But local authorities have stonewalled all efforts by the family and maintained that the victim committed suicide. Last week, the police told the court that the surveillance cameras at the station “malfunctioned” on the day Altaf died, a violation of a Supreme Court ruling that mandates all police stations in the country to have CCTV to increase accountability. Mr Haider said the police claims on non-functional cameras suggest a state-backed cover-up. “The CCTV cameras during the incident and the following days were specifically not functioning and shows complicity,” Mr Haider told The National . Experts say the state's unwillingness to hold law enforcement officers accountable for their illegal actions remains one of the leading reasons for custodial abuse. Raja Bagga, a senior programme officer working on police reform with the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative, a Delhi-based NGO, said lengthy trials and low prosecution rates give the police a sense of impunity to inflict torture. “There is often a lack of evidence because policemen, who are often the only eye witnesses to the violence inside lockups, do not come forward as witnesses against their own, as they are bound by the 'ties of brotherhood',” Mr Bagga told The National . “Where evidence has been found, the barriers of seeking prior sanction to prosecute police officers, the hostility and threats from them, the delays in getting even an FIR [first information report] registered are some of the many obstacles which makes prosecution difficult." Experts say there are several safeguards, such as police complaint authorities, to supervise law and internal discipline but such committees have not been created in most states, giving the police free rein. India has yet to ratify the 1987 UN Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment. The largest democracy in the world is one of only nine countries that has not yet ratified the treaty – the others include Sudan, Brunei and Haiti. Mr Bagga said the delay in endorsing the international human rights treaty even after 25 years indicates the government’s lack of will towards guaranteeing the constitutional right to life and dignity to suspects.