Mumbai: Expressing concern over Maharashtra accounting for the highest number of custodial deaths in the country over the last 15 years, the Bombay High court today asked the state government to take immediate preventive steps. “Apply your mind… ensure that custodial deaths do not occur,” said the division bench headed by Justice V M Kanade. The court was hearing a petition alleging the death of a minor, Agnelo Valdaris, in Wadala police lock-up last April.
Advocate Rebecca Gonsalves, representing the CBI, said the agency had sent an investigation report to its headquarters in Delhi for approval. The bench gave two weeks’ time to CBI to submit the report to the court. “We expect a positive response from the CBI,” it said. “It is shocking to note that even after orders were passed by the High Court in August last year, the incidents of custodial death are on rise in Maharashtra. We have observed that the victims of custodial death are those who are held for trivial offences,” the judges noted. The bench had said in an earlier order that as far as possible, interrogation should not be conducted at night. Today’s order reiterated the point.
Advocate Yug Chaudhry, acting as amicus curiae (friend of the court), pointed out the data by the National Crime Records Bureau which says that between 1999 and 2013 there were 333 custodial deaths in Maharashtra — over 23 per cent of all the custodial deaths in India. “There were 45 FIRs; only 19 charge-sheets were filed and nobody was convicted. Despite the Supreme Court’s orders about norms to be followed while arresting a person, the police were in violation,” said advocate Chaudhry. On August 13 last year, the HC had directed the government to install CCTV cameras at police stations and ensure that FIRs are registered if accused die in custody.
Today, public prosecutor Mankuwar Deshmukh submitted that government had earmarked funds for CCTV cameras. As a pilot project, it had identified 25 police stations in the Pune and Mumbai regions for CCTV installation. In the August 2014 order, the court had said that CCTV data would be preserved for a year and the senior inspector of the police station would be responsible for ensuring that the cameras are operational.
The HC’s guidelines mandate taking photographs if the accused is injured in custody and taking him to the nearest hospital, monitoring of investigation by a magistrate and making efforts to arrest the officers involved. Today, the judges said they were hopeful that the previous orders would be followed in letter and spirit. Chaudhry said that in the case of the custodial death of Agnelo Valdaris in Wadala police lock-up, four or five boys had been arrested including the deceased. They were allegedly tortured in custody and sexually assaulted.
