Police Brutality: A Case For Urgent Intervention By The Constitutional Courts

Police brutality manifests itself both on and off the street – in the form of lathi charges, provocative firing on citizens, public shaming and beating, fake encounters, custodial torture happening in police station and other penitentiaries. Realising the need for judicial intervention in such matters, detailed guidelines were formulated by the Supreme Court in the cases of Joginder Singh and D.K.Basu, providing inter alia for the memo of arrest being attested by at least one witness, the arrested person being made aware of his right to have a close family remember being informed of his arrest, the right of the arrestee to meet his lawyer during interrogation, though not throughout the investigation, the constitutional obligation to have the arrested person produced before a magistrate within 24 hours and for a medical examination in certain cases. -"….the state must re-educate the constabulary out of their sadistic arts and inculcate a respect for the human person –a process which must begin more by example than by percept if the lower rungs are really to emulate, then "….nothing inflicts a deeper wound on our constitutional culture than a state official running berserk regardless of human rights" "When will wits, not fists, become a police kit", asked Justice Krishna Iyer. Even though the law with regard to use of force on the citizenry for dispersing any unlawful assembly, is pretty clear, when it provides for " use as little force, and do as little injury to person or property, as may be consistent with dispersing the assembly and detaining such persons ", the police in India are habituated to use of excessive force as a matter of policy to quell democratically permitted dissent. The Supreme Court of India in 1981, speaking through Justice Krishna Iyer in K.S.R.Devwas conscious of the situation we are in today and had this to say "So long as an iron curtain divides the law set by the Constitution and lit by the Supreme Court from the minions of the states, so long shall this Court's writ remain a mystic myth and harmless half-truth making law in the books and law- in- action distant neighbours.