New Delhi, February 6
In view of the allegations of custodial torture of a man from Haryana, his family and relatives by the police in connection with a criminal case, the Supreme Court has laid down fresh guidelines to prevent police atrocities and involved the state human rights panels and the CBI to enquire into such cases.
Laying six-point guidelines, a Bench comprising Chief Justice Y.K. Sabharwal, Mr Justice B.N. Srikrishna and Mr Justice R.V. Raveendran said, “The endeavour should be to achieve a balanced level of functioning where the police respects human rights, adhere to law, and take confidence-building measures and at the same time firmly deal with terrorism, white collared crimes and deteriorating law and order.”
When allegations of police atrocities are made then an independent agency, preferably human rights commission of the state concerned or the CBI could be entrusted with adequate power to investigate the case, the court said, but declined to grant compensation to Sube Singh and his family and relatives as prayed for by him, saying that “no clear or incontrovertible evidence of custodial torture” was established.
The apex court, which had converted Sube Singh’s letter sent to it from hiding on November 19, 1998, into a writ petition and ordering a CBI inquiry, the court said the agency had concluded that the allegations of custodial torture though “exaggerated” but were not wholly wrong.
According to the CBI the allegations were made against several police officials who were posted at different police stations at different point of time between March 1998 and June 2001 when the alleged torture had taken place.
Since the CBI had already registered a case against 10 police officials, including two ASIs, the criminal courts and civil courts could take appropriate action regarding awarding the compensation to the petitioner or punishment to police officials, if found guilty. “
The guidelines said police training should be re-oriented to change the mindset of personnel and give respect to human rights, continuous monitoring of the working of police force at lower level, complete compliance of apex court guidelines on custodial interrogation in D.K. Basu case, prompt registration of FIRs against police officials in such cases, use of modern technology like video recording or preparation of computer data of every case in police station and involvement of rights panels in the probe.
The 10 police officers who had been named in the FIR by CBI are Dharam Singh, Satya Narain (ASIs), Om Prakash, Balbir Singh (head constables), Dilbag Singh, Sudarshan Kumar, Mukesh Kumar, Dhoop Singh, Dharam Pal and Mohinder Singh (constables).
