New Delhi: Custodial violence will only stop when the state bleeds, the Meghalaya High Court said last week as it framed guidelines on compensation for families in cases of custodial death.
In a 28 August order, the court said, “If police brutalities and inhuman treatment of persons in custody have to be arrested, the compensation for custodial death has to be pegged at a level where the State will bleed to make the payment; not what the State is happy to pay off (sic).”
The division bench of Chief Justice Sanjib Banerjee and Justice H. S. Thangkhiew was hearing a case taken up suo motu on the directions of the Supreme Court in a 2017 case, Inhuman conditions in 1382 prisons. In its ruling, the apex court had asked high courts to frame rules on compensation for custodial deaths.
Calling custodial deaths a “slur on a civilised state and completely unacceptable”, the high court gave a six-month deadline for compensating families of custodial violence victims. If such families have already been identified, then this payment should be made in three months, the court said.
“Ideally, there should be no death, except due to natural causes, while in custody. Of course, the natural causes are beyond the control of the State and convicts serving long sentences may also have age-related problems which may lead to their death,“ the bench said.
The court’s order came after it was told that 53 cases of custodial deaths — 25 natural and 28 unnatural — had been reported in the state since 2012.
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‘State responsible for arrested person’s well-being’
In order to define natural and unnatural deaths, the court relied on the 2017 SC ruling, which in turn fell back on definitions by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).
“Death is ‘natural’ when it is caused solely by disease and/or the aging process. It is ‘unnatural’ when its causes are external, such as intentional injury (homicide, suicide), negligence or unintentional injury (death by accident),” the Meghalaya HC said, quoting the 2017 SC ruling.
The HC also said that compensation would vary depending on the age of the victim — Rs 15 lakh for those under 30, Rs 12 lakh for those between 30 and 45 years and Rs 10 lakh for those over 45.
“While the State has every right to arrest a person during an investigation, subject to following the procedure established by law, or depriving a convict of his liberty by reason of the sentence that he has suffered, when a citizen or any other person is in the custody of the State, the State is responsible for his well-being,” the division bench of the Meghalaya HC said.
It further said that if such a person dies in custody, “unless the State is able to affirmatively establish that the cause of death was natural, it will be inferred that the person died an unnatural death”.
It added that if the family of such a victim doesn’t claim the compensation money, the state, after “waiting a reasonable period”, can give the money to the cancer department at the Shillong civil hospital.
(Edited by Uttara Ramaswamy)
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