JOIN USHighlighting the possibility that prisoners walking free from detention could die within 24 or 48 hours after their release, a senior advocate has said that the definition of custodial deaths needed to be expanded to ensure greater protection for prisoners.
Advocate A M Singhvi, acting as amicus curiae to the Supreme Court, pointed out that prisoners die in mysterious circumstances in secluded places soon after getting freed from police custody.
Such deaths were never reported as custodial deaths though they take place more or less immediately after the detention ends.
In his recommendation to the apex court, Singhvi has asked it to direct the Centre to frame uniform procedures for reporting cases of custodial death.
“Encounter killings of persons in custody often take place with the person being shown in the books as having been released from custody, and thereafter, being taken to forest, or secluded place, or railway lines and killed,” Singhvi said.
“Since the death takes place outside the four walls of the police station, and after alleged release from custody, it is not reported as custodial death. In order to plug this loophole, it is necessary to include in the term ‘custodial death’, all persons who were in custody and who have died an unnatural death within 24 or 48 hours of being released from custody,” he said.
The government should be directed to device a uniform, exhaustive format for reporting custodial deaths, as it would help in collation, aggregation and analysis of data, Singhvi added.