Need to reform police to end custodial deaths: Santosh Hegde, former IPS officers

A group of eminent persons, including former Lokayukta justice Santosh Hegde and former IPS officers, have sought comprehensive police reforms, including an anti-torture law, to put an end to the saga of custodial deaths in the wake of the alleged custodial murder of a father and son in Tamil Nadu’s Thoothukudi.

Noting that lack of reforms has left the police in a colonial hangover, they said in a letter that proactive measures were needed to equip the police system to serve in a democratic country.

This, they said, includes periodically fixed, intensive workshops, on a refresher basis to instruct station-house officers about their obligation to rigorously follow procedures so as to avoid custodial deaths resulting from “any form of torture, cruel or inhuman treatment whether it occurs during investigation, interrogation or otherwise.”

The letter is signed by Srikumar, S T Ramesh and Rupak Kumar Dutta, who held the post of DG and IGP as well as former chairman of Karnataka Legislative Council B K Chandrashekar. There was a crying necessity for Parliament to enact an anti-torture legislation, it added.

It called for stringent punishment of the police found guilty of such crimes and urged political leaders to refrain from protecting such officers.

They said the Supreme Court’s directions to ensure implementation of preventive measures such as the duty to inform the kin or a friend of the arrestee about the time, place of arrest and venue of custody are rarely
followed.