time-to-stop-savage-custodial-brutalities

Off and on there are reports of custodial deaths from different parts of the country. Rarely does it happen that the culprits responsible for the “cold blooded murders” get adequately and proportionately punished, if they really get punished at all. In most of the cases the “culprits in the uniform” get away with it.

 

On Tuesday, a special court granted regular bail to four cops facing charges for framing an innocent bus conductor for the murder of a Class II student in Gurugram in 2017.

 

While there have been umpteen examples of custodial brutalities, the framing of Ashok Kumar, a conductor working for the school bus of Ryan International School, Gurugram, is unique. The extreme of torture unleashed on him was so much that not only did he confess to the murder, he had never committed and was in no way linked with, in police custody, but even in front of the media and television cameras. One can imagine the threat, the torture, the fear and extreme brutality he must have been subjected to, that he thought it better to “confess” even in front of the cameras as well.

 

The accused police officials, including one DSP, are already on bail. In all likelihood, they will soon be reinstated and will start living a normal life. They will get back to their favourite postings. Haryana government initially denied permission for their prosecution saying theirs was only an “error of judgement” in framing an innocent person for a crime whose punishment could be life imprisonment.

 

On September 8, 2017, a Class II student of Ryan International School was stabbed in the neck in the school bathroom. The school authorities rushed him to hospital. Bus conductor Ashok Kumar was asked for help to put him in the car. In the process, he got bloodstains on his clothes, which the police used as evidence against him.

 

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As it later turned out, after the CBI took over the investigation, the student was killed by one of his seniors. Had it not been for the parents of the victim, poor bus conductor may well still have been in jail living with a stigma of being a paedophile and a child murderer. Police not only made him to confess to the murder, but also sexual assault, which was made to be the prime motive.

 

After Ashok Kumar was acquitted by a CBI court of the murder charges, he revealed that he was threatened of more torture, even with death by the police if he did not confess to the murder, which he had never committed. He apparently thought confession as a better option than to continue to undergo custodial brutality.

 

This speaks volumes about the criminal justice system prevailing in the country. Custodial brutality is not exclusive to any particular state police. It is the norm across the country where the police use brutal force to extract confessions from the suspects of various crimes.

 

Sometimes even political scores and rivalries are settled in the custodial centres of the police with those in power abusing the police to harass their political opponents.

 

Recently, one helpless person was killed in custody in Tamil Nadu. He was accused of theft. While dying, he helplessly told his mother, “I did not steal.” About a month ago another youth was killed in police custody in Punjab. The instances are numerous. Such killings are often termed as accidental or suicidal.

 

It calls for serious police reforms, particularly the way custodial interrogation of the accused is carried out. Use of CCTV cameras, presence of lawyer(s) during questioning or neutral civil society members or authorised people during the interrogation should be mandatory.

 

Moreover, custodial confessions do not stand in the courts. The accused is made to suffer brutality without any benefit to solve the cases. The police can use other available evidence to prove the charges instead of torturing the accused with extreme brutality.

 

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Another important issue is the mental status of the investigating/ interrogating officials. They must be made to undergo regular psychiatric tests. Because, the extent of power and authority they exercise against a suspect in custody is unbridled and unchallenged. Anyone with a disturbed mind will neither be able to do justice to the matter he is handling nor to the suspect.

 

Brutality is no solution. It is only the expression of bestiality hidden inside the officials, which they unleash on the suspects as happened in case of the Ryan International School bus conductor. His misfortune was that he was around and helped the victim to be taken to the hospital.

 

The tragedy in such cases is that the accused is not presumed innocent, but guilty till proven innocent. The guilt of the accused is further reinforced by a compliant media, which takes the police version about the accused at face value. In Ryan case, big television channels interviewed Ashok Kumar showing him confessing to the crime. The news channels have so far not removed the video nor tendered any apology to the victim.

 

The local Bar Association that time had decided not to defend Ashok Kumar as the offence against him was too horrific - that of sexual assault on a young child and subsequent murder. The public anger was so much that Ashok Kumar could even have been lynched. And it was all done by the police which made him confess in front of the television cameras. When a reporter asked him why he did it, he replied that he had lost his mind, despite not having done it.

 

Ashok Kumar was rarest of the rare and luckiest of the lucky to come out alive and innocent. Had it not been the victim’s parents who insisted on a CBI probe, the Haryana Police had closed the probe and pronounced Ashok Kumar guilty. Even, then Haryana chief minister Manoharlal Khattar had claimed that the police had carried out a fair investigation.

 

Unless such cases are not taken seriously and exemplary punishments are not awarded in a time-bound manner, there will be so many Ashok Kumars who will meet the same fate. We really don’t know how many there may be already who have been made to confess to the crimes, which they never committed, under custodial brutality.

 

A police official using unbridled power in an arbitrary and bestially brutal manner is worse than a criminal wielding a gun. Because a police official knows that he is above the law and can certainly get away with the crime he is committing while a criminal knows that he can be caught and punished anytime.