Editorial: Tackling Police Torture In Custody
Victims are Mostly Poor and Accused of Minor Crimes
Dear Readers,
I am happy to share the findings of the Status of Policing in India Report (SPIR) 2025 on ‘Police Torture and (Un)Accountability’. The study is focused on violence in police custody, a problematic and underresearched subject. This issue of your journal summarises the report and the event that marked its release.
The SPIR 2025 is the sixth in the series of data-driven reports since 2018. It is by far the most challenging of policing reports involving mixed methodologies. We believe it is also one of the most policy-relevant studies on police torture in India. The SPIR series was conceived as a tool to monitor the impact of policing on the ground and its inherent problems.
The report unpacks police torture, high-handedness, and custodial violence through surveys with police personnel, analysis of trends and patterns, and interviews. It seeks to fill a huge gap in the availability of authentic data on police attitudes about the unlawful use of force and deaths in custody. It is based on surveys with over 8000 police personnel across 17 states/UTs. The study also involved an analysis of official data and in-depth interviews with other stakeholders—judges, lawyers, and doctors— whose job is to be a safeguard against police torture.
Besides condensing the 215-page report into a few short articles, this special issue also sums up the launch event at the India International Centre, New Delhi, on March 26, 2025. The keynote address was delivered by former Chief Justice of Orissa High Court, Justice S Muralidhar, which was preceded by a panel discussion with former DGP, Mr Prakash Singh, medico-legal expert, Dr Amar Jesani, and human rights lawyer, Ms Vrinda Grover. Please visit commoncause.in for a video recording of the event and a soft copy of the report.
What we know for sure is that incidents of police torture go unreported, unless they are exposed due to public outcry or occasional bad press. The officers tend to blame heinous crimes or terrorism to justify their violent methods of interrogation. On the contrary, a typical victim is accused of a relatively minor crime and belongs to poor or marginalised sections of society. A large number of police personnel believe that being violent is necessary to extract confessions, which they consider part of their job.
Torture is explicitly banned under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948. While most countries have ratified the UN Convention Against Torture (UNCAT, 1984) by making domestic laws, India’s successive governments have failed to do so for over 75 years. The UNCAT makes the prohibition of torture, like slavery, a compelling law or jus cogens that other laws or circumstances cannot overwrite. A sure consequence of India’s evasion is that our own people suffer the most at the cost of dehumanising our police forces.
The SPIR 2025 covers problems we neither concede nor study institutionally. The surveys bring out the cops’ attitudes about torture and their approaches to law enforcement. It is designed to offer insights for policy and advocacy and as a building block for more research.
As always, your feedback will be greatly appreciated.
Vipul Mudgal
Editor
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