Custodial Violence: A Challenge to Penology and Human Rights

Custodial violence remains an all pervading, insidious and even pervasive challenge to the rule of law, penological objective and human rights monuments enshrined in our Constitution as well as the International Conventions. Though we have a plethora of laws, judgments and policy measures to prevent and address these violations custodial torture, custodial deaths and other cruel treatment by the authorities continue to be reported. In this paper, we examine the legislations (both legislative and constitutional) governing custodial practices in India, significant judicial pronouncements on custody and statements of administrative policy that have contributed to shaping arrest and interrogation and sketch some recent trends in case law and policy which cast their shadow on present realities. The paper projects custodial violence as a symptom not merely of private criminality on the part of custodians but that which is the systemic failure of penological institutions and seeks to make out that intervention in it complains effective crystallization demands, doctrinaire clarity, procedural safeguards, autonomous investigatory circuits accountability systems and changes in the overarching metanarrative about what policing and detention means from punishment to human dignity. The article concludes with concrete recommendations for legislative change, adjudication, administrative action and civil society engagement.