Towards A More Humane Police Force

Context: Efforts are needed to improve the human rights protection regime in police stations.

Issues in policing in India

• Custodial deaths: One of the worst crimes in a civilised society governed by the rule of law
  • National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) data reveal that on average of about 100 custodial deaths have taken place every year between 2010 and 2019.
  • Of them, 3.5 persons allegedly died due to injuries caused by policemen, 8.6 while escaping from custody, 28.1 due to suicide, and the rest due to various reasons like illness and injuries.
  • On average, 47.2 criminal cases were registered annually against policemen in the last 10 years.
• High number of unwanted arrests: The rate and number of arrests still remains high.
  • Though the arrests are on fall: the ratio of the number of arrests to the number of IPC offences has decreased from 1.33 in 2010 to 0.96 in 2019, and despite an increase in total IPC offences, the actual number of arrests has reduced by more than five lakhs in the last five years.
• Institutional lethargy:
  • The National Police Commission (1977-81), the Law Commission’s 154th report (1996) and the Malimath Committee Report (2003), among others, and the Supreme Court in Prakash Singh v. Union of India (2006), have recommended that the investigating police should be separated from the law-and-order police to ensure better expertise in the investigation. 
  • The implementation is lagging due to a lack of political will and resources.
• Capacity challenges: 
  • Over-burdened: Number of cases are increasing and, unless investigating officers are increased in proportion to the number of serious offences, the quality of investigation may suffer.
  • Limited subject experts: Which is critical as there is an increase in newer types of crime like white-collar crime and cybercrime.

Way forward

• Initiate steps to check human rights violation in police stations: Amend arrest related laws and strengthen checks by legislating Supreme Court directives such as
  • Arnesh Kumar v. State of Bihar (2014): SC held that despite the offence being non-bailable under Section 498A of the Indian Penal Code (IPC), which relates to torture for dowry, an arrest is not mandatory as per Section 41 of the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC).
  • Special Action Forum v. Union of India (2018): SC held that police officers shall furnish magistrate the reasons and materials which necessitated the arrest for further detention of the accused.
  • Paramvir Singh v. Baljit Singh (2020): SC directed States to cover more areas of each police station under CCTV cameras and have a storage facility for audio-video recording for 18 months.
• Political will to implement police reforms:
  • Investigating police should be separated from the law-and-order police to ensure better expertise in investigation, as recommended by SC and various commissions.
  • It was suggested that the separation starts in towns which have more than 10 lakh population.
• Capacity augmentation:
  • Increase number of investigating officers: In line with the Malimath Committee recommendation that an investigating officer should preferably investigate no more than 10 cases every year.
  • Institutional mechanism to have more subject experts to assist the police in investigation.
  • Police force needs to be sensitised regularly and encouraged to employ scientific tools of interrogation and investigation like the lie detection test, narco test and brain fingerprinting test.