Transparency is a must for accessing justice

Sarkari Secrets

Last week, the Karnataka Information Commission (KIC) imposed a Rs 25,000 fine on the Public Information Officer (PIO) of Kolar’s Nangali Police Station. A concerned citizen had sought the police station’s CCTV footage in connection with the custody of a 24-year-old youth. Muniraju, a villager, was picked up from his house in Annamayya district, Andhra Pradesh, and questioned at the police station regarding a theft case for, not one, not two, but 10 consecutive days. He died in a hospital within 24 hours of being released. The PIO initially denied access to the footage, citing the privacy exemption under the RTI Act, but later on claimed that all four CCTV cameras installed in the PS were under repair.

Frowning upon these evasive responses, the KIC directed the higher authorities to deduct the fine from the PIO’s salary. They are also required to submit a report about the action taken to comply with the Supreme Court’s December 2020 directive to install functional CCTV cameras in all police stations.

Even as this RTI intervention was progressing, some sections of the media spotlighted Muniraju’s case as a “lockup death”. To counter this allegation, Kolar’s Superintendent of Police held a media briefing. He admitted that Muniraju was questioned at the Nangali PS from August 24 to September 2 in relation to a complaint about the theft of a motorcycle. He also claimed that Muniraju had unhealed wounds on his leg from a road accident he had suffered a few months ago which eventually turned gangrenous resulting in his death at the hospital.

This version raises doubts about the PIO’s written admission before the KIC that the CCTV cameras became dysfunctional August 27 onwards -- three days after Muniraju was brought to the police station for questioning. Why should the first three days’ CCTV footage remain a sarkari secret then?

That is not all. According to the police, the location of a stolen cell phone was traced to Muniraju’s house before he was apprehended. The FIR based on which he was picked up contains no mention of the theft of a phone. Nor is Muniraju named as a suspect in the FIR. The police’s media briefing did not indicate if he was formally arrested and produced before the local Magistrate within 24 hours. Instead, the police apparently issued him a notice to join the investigation just before he was released!

Unlike their counterparts in Kerala, the Karnataka Police have not yet complied with the 12-year-old statutory requirement of publishing on their website the details of every person they arrest along with the reasons and place of arrest. Like the installation of CCTV cameras, such information disclosure is an important measure to prevent the abuse of police powers of arrest. These important legal safeguards just did not work for Muniraju.

Interestingly, in 2022 the government claimed on affidavit that 99.7% of its 1,055 police stations had complied with the SC’s CCTV installation directive. The India Justice Report, 2022, ranks Karnataka Police number two among states in terms of their infrastructural and human resource capacity to deliver on their mandated functions under the criminal justice system.

The Karnataka State Police Complaints Authority, established under a 2006 SC directive to inquire into complaints of ‘serious misconduct’ such as arrests or detention without due process and deaths in police custody, has for long remained headless and without any independent members. The public-spirited lawyers who appeared before the KIC have also filed a PIL suit in the High Court for filling up these vacancies.

Meanwhile Muniraju’s ‘unnatural death’ is being inquired into by the local police. Accessing justice is often a Sisyphean task.