“CUSTODIAL DEATHS AS A VIOLATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS: AN INDIAN LEGAL PERSPECTIVE”

Custodial violence and custodial deaths represent one of the gravest failures of constitutional
governance in India because they involve the State itself becoming the instrument of violence
against persons whose liberty it has already curtailed.
In a constitutional democracy founded on the rule of law, the power to arrest, detain, and
interrogate is meant to be exercised strictly within legal boundaries; when these powers are
abused through torture, coercion, or unlawful killings, the violation strikes at the core of
Articles 21 and 22 of the Constitution, which protect life, personal liberty, and procedural
fairness.
The seriousness of custodial abuse lies not only in the physical injury inflicted on the victim,
but also in the symbolic collapse of public trust in institutions of justice. A person in custody
is under the complete control of the State, and for that reason the legal system imposes a higher
duty of care upon police and investigative agencies than in ordinary situations. The Supreme
Court in D.K. Basu v. State of West Bengal treated custodial violence as a matter of
constitutional urgency and laid down mandatory safeguards intended to prevent torture,
disappearance, and abuse during arrest and detention.
The issue remains deeply troubling because India possesses a substantial constitutional and
procedural framework on paper, yet custodial violence continues to recur with disturbing
regularity. Recent public reporting based on data placed before Parliament has shown continuing
custodial deaths and a strikingly low level of disciplinary accountability, reinforcing the long
recognized problem that formal rights often fail at the stage of enforcement. This gap between
legal promise and ground reality forms the central concern of any serious socio-legal study on
the subject.