The brutality of the killings of Jayaraj and Bennicks in the Sathankulam police station in Thoothukudi, Tamil Nadu, is of a piece with police high-handedness which thrives in a broken criminal justice system. The police, responsible for those in their custody, acted in criminal breach of their constitutional and statutory duty.
The murderous assault on the father-son duo took place despite a strong legal framework that protects the rights of an accused in custody. Examples are Article 21 and 22 of the Constitution of India, provisions of the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC) relating to procedures of arrest and investigation, provisions of the Evidence Act relating to admissibility of evidence, and Supreme Court (SC) judgments like DK Basu vs State of West Bengal and Anesh Kumar vs State of Bihar.
One important safeguard is the medical examination of the arrestees, detailing injury marks if any. The medical officer’s report on Jayaraj and Bennicks recorded their injuries merely as “abrasions,” even though accounts suggest that both were bleeding profusely while in custody.
Another critical safeguard is that the police have to produce arrestees in court within 24 hours of the arrest, for the magistrate to ensure their legal rights are not violated.
The presence of a lawyer during arrest reduces the possibility of physical harm and violation of the legal rights of the arrestees. In the absence of any mechanism, this constitutional right is often denied. For example, when lawyers went to the Sathankulam police station to meet Jayaraj and Bennicks, they were not allowed access.
In 2018, the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB)’s latest annual report recorded 70 deaths in police custody --12 were from Tamil Nadu, the second-highest after Gujarat, with 14 deaths.
The question is: Will the outrage and attention the Jayaraj and Bennicks case has garnered finally bring about accountability? Going by the past record, it seems unlikely. There are roadblocks at each stage from the filing of a First Information Report (FIR) against the police to their prosecution. In the Thoothukudi case, initially, two sub-inspectors, Balakrishnan and Raghu Ganesh, were suspended, and departmental proceedings initiated against them. This is the usual response in such cases, but things get complicated after this step.
As per Section 176 (1A) of CrPC, every case of custodial violence shall be investigated by a judicial magistrate. But the 2018 NCRB report shows that of the 70 cases of custodial death in the year, judicial enquiries were ordered in only 28. Charge-sheets were filed only against 13 police personnel --11 of them were from Gujarat, the state with the highest number of custodial deaths. In Tamil Nadu, no police personnel were arrested, let alone charge-sheeted.
In the Thoothukhudi killings, while an enquiry by the judicial magistrate has been initiated, the magistrate, in a letter to the Madras High Court, has alleged that the police is trying to intimidate them and destroy the evidence. This is a reflection of the impunity the police enjoys. Eventually, the Madras High Court had to intervene. As of now, the Crime Branch-Crime Investigation Department (CB-CID) of Tamil Nadu Police has taken over the case and the five policemen accused of torture have finally been arrested and sent to judicial custody.
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