Chennai: Last week, Tamil Nadu was rocked by the custodial death of 27-year-old B. Ajith Kumar, whose autopsy revealed 44 gruesome injury marks, including evidence of torture with chilli powder stuffed in genitals, mouth, and ears. In its FIR, Sivaganga police claimed that Ajith, a security guard, suffered an epileptic seizure and fell during an escape attempt.
He was taken for interrogation by the police in connection with a theft case on the night of 26 June and allegedly tortured till evening the next day. Ajith’s death in police custody is not a one-off case given that Tamil Nadu, according to the data presented in the Lok Sabha in December 2022, reported 46 such deaths between 2016-17 and 2021-2022.
For long, the Tamil Nadu police have faced allegations of using “third-degree” torture during interrogation, as highlighted in the custodial deaths of Jayaraj and Bennix (2020), Vignesh (2022), and now Ajith.
Dr M. Priyamvadha, a professor in the department of Criminology at University of Madras, told ThePrint that custodial torture has become part of the “police culture” across the country, but is more normalised in Tamil Nadu. “It is being normalised so much so that the people are accepting the treatment as it was allegedly inflicted upon a ‘criminal’. Even senior police officers would not accept the third-degree treatment as a wrong method of practice, since they have been used to such a method of investigation.”
Activists like non-profit organisation Evidence founder A. Kathir, on the other hand, allege that the party in power has been using the police as a tool to suppress dissent, giving them unchecked powers that lead to such custodial tortures.
“No party is an exception to this. Whoever comes to power, they grant extraordinary powers to the police to suppress dissent and to cover up their failures. So, there has not been any strong action against any officials involved in it,” Kathir told ThePrint.
The police, according to human rights activist and People’s Watch coordinator Aseervatham, have more often targeted socially and economically disadvantaged individuals—those unable to afford legal recourse.
Referring to the custodial death of Vignesh in 2022, he said the 25-year-old Chennai resident was from a Dalit family who sold balloons at Marina beach. “Had it not been for the media and activists, they would not have even questioned the police for their brutal torture.”
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‘Injury marks all over body’
Police sources privy to Ajith’s autopsy report told ThePrint that he suffered internal bleeding in brain, apart from over 40 injuries. “The injury marks were all over the body including on his buttocks, chest and face,” said one source.
Sakthiswaran, who reportedly videographed the police assault from a distance and submitted it as evidence to the Madras High Court, confirmed that his friend Ajith was subjected to custodial torture. “They assaulted Ajith with sticks close to the temple where he worked. I happened to be inside a bathroom there and videographed from the widow gap for a few minutes before sneaking out from the place,” he told ThePrint.
On 3 July, Sakthiswaran wrote to the Tamil Nadu director general of police (DGP) seeking protection, as he feared repercussions from the local police for shooting the video and submitting it in the court. The request was granted.
Five policemen have been arrested and sent to 15-day judicial custody. Nevertheless, the Madras HC took note of the case and slammed the police for the brutal torture. “Even a murderer would not have caused this much injury to a person,” it said Tuesday.
Chief Minister M.K. Stalin has transferred the case to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) for further investigation. The Sivaganga superintendent of police had already initiated an investigation into the case.
Human rights activist Henri Tiphagne felt that it was not wise on the part of the government to transfer the case to CBI. “If efficient police officers were deputed to handle the case, they would file the charge sheet in 30 days and would get justice for the dead. This is to prolong the investigation,” the People’s Watch executive director told ThePrint.
Ajith’s death, according to him, was a continuing pattern of the torture and violence inflicted during interrogation in police custody.
“Despite modernising the police stations and vehicles, interrogation and investigation methods have not changed. They continue to torture suspects, irrespective of the gravity of the crime. It is a systematic failure which begins from police to doctors,” Tiphagne said.
Data from the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) reveals a troubling escalation: custodial deaths went up to 109 in 2021 from 6 in 2011. Although action was taken against a few policemen, Tamil Nadu saw zero convictions in these cases between 2017 and 2022.
Former Tamil Nadu DGP M. Ravi maintained that the system does not allow anybody to torture suspects. “Few of the black sheep in the police system are corrupting the entire system, creating a bad name for the entire department,” he told ThePrint. The retired IPS officer also emphasised psychological training for policemen involved in custodial violence.
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Sathankulam horror redux
Ajith’s custodial death brought back chilling memories of the 2020 Sathankulam custodial deaths, wherein P. Jayaraj and his son Benicks were tortured in the Sathankulam police station for 12 hours.
Jayaraj’s son-in-law Vinoth said their family was yet to come to terms with what happened to the father-son duo. “It happened during the (COVID-19) lockdown, and the three daughters couldn’t believe that it happened to their father and brother. Benicks’s mother is still in trauma. Every time she hears such news, she says that her husband and son also might have undergone the same kind of torture in the hands of police,” he told ThePrint.
Taking suo motu cognizance, the Madras HC had ordered a videographed autopsy and transferred the case to CBI. Nine policemen, including an inspector, were charged with murder. The trial has dragged on, leaving the family in limbo. “The case is being heard in the court. Since each policeman has got a lawyer separately, they keep recalling the witness to drag on the case. This continues endlessly despite the high court setting a timeline to complete the hearing. We demand that justice is delivered soon,” Vinoth said.
The Sathankulam case is part of a broader pattern.
In 2023, IPS officer Balveer Singh was accused of torturing 19 individuals, including a minor. The excesses included extraction of teeth with pliers and severe beating with lathis. His suspension was lifted in January 2024, fueling accusations of state protection.
Similarly, in 2022, Vignesh’s autopsy reports revealed that he had 13 injuries, including a fracture in the leg. The previous year, A. Murugesan, a fruit stall owner from Salem’s Edayapatti, was allegedly tortured to death.
There were four custodial deaths across Madurai, Viluppura, Chennai and Virudhunagar districts in a span of 12 days in April 2024, according to People’s Watch. “It was the time when the Model Code of Conduct was in place for the Lok Sabha polls. But, there is no such code for (dealing with) custodial torture and death,” Aseervatham said.
Too many ‘slips’ in bathroom
Going by NCRB data, Tamil Nadu reported 6 custodial deaths in 2011, 7 in 2012, 15 in 2013, 7 in 2014, 3 in 2015, 5 in 2016, 8 in 2017, 12 in 2018, and 11 in 2019.
The cases shot up to 63 in 2020 and 109 in 2021. While data after 2022 is not available in NCRB, Tamil Nadu police records accessed by ThePrint show 24 custodial deaths since 2021.
Aseervatham pointed out that the numbers were likely underreported. “We have recorded about 11 custodial deaths in 2022 alone, but the NCRB data says only 5,” said the People’s Watch coordinator.
A pattern emerges in cases of custodial torture wherein the suspects arrested in criminal cases suffered fractures in the limbs allegedly due to “slippery bathrooms”.
According to RTI data received by advocate and Prisoners’ Rights Forum director P. Pugalenthi, at least 304 suspects at Central Prison in Puzhal Chennai suffered fractures in the period from 1 January to 7 October last year.
Police attributed many of these injuries to “slips in the bathroom,” a claim dismissed by Madras HC as “absurd” and indicative of a cover-up for custodial torture.
In May, the high court lambasted the police’s explanation of “slippery toilets” for these injuries. “If bathrooms are so dangerous, why aren’t they fixed? Are the prison bathrooms slippery only for the prisoners and accused?” it asked.
Evidence founder-director Kathir told ThePrint that this pattern of attributing serious injuries to improbable accidents underscores a systemic effort to evade accountability, further eroding public trust in the police.
The above-mentioned RTI data show that the highest number of cases involving prisoners with fractures were in March and August last year, with 51 and 79 cases, respectively.
“This data itself tells the story that those injuries were not during ‘a fall in the bathroom’, but reveals that those fractures often involved severe injuries inconsistent with accidental falls, pointing to deliberate beatings,” Pugalenthi told ThePrint.
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Caste-based discrimination?
A look at the data reveals that marginalised groups, particularly Scheduled Castes (SCs), are the most affected when it comes to detenues in prisons.
For instance, a government response in the Lok Sabha established that 38.5 percent of detenues in Tamil Nadu were SCs in 2021, despite them constituting only 20 percent of the population. Overall, the share of SCs was over 23 percent nationwide.
“This reflects caste-based discrimination, where Dalits and other lower-caste groups are often targeted for harassment or torture to extract confessions or assert dominance,” Madurai-based human rights activist K.Karthik told ThePrint.
Similarly, Prabha Kalvimani, an activist working among the Irula tribals in northern Tamil Nadu, alleged that many indigenous people were implicated in crimes that they had no connection with.
“At least 100 are facing trials in cases that they are unaware of. The moment they came out on bail, they were arrested in some other case just to finish off the pending cases. This has been the trend for a long time, but now it has slowly decreased,” Kalvimani said.
Arguing that custodial torture was not unique to Tamil Nadu, another Madurai-based activist, K. Karthik, lamented that the society has normalised police violence when it is inflicted upon a person suspected of having commited a crime.
“When an encounter or a custodial torture happens to a person who has allegedly committed a crime, there is a kind of acceptance. Even the public anger is selective. Only when they believe that the victim is really innocent, do people raise their voice. If it happens to an accused of sexual crimes, nobody will bother,” Karthik said.
Police violence in popular culture
Even Tamil films released in the early 2000s—Saamy, Kaakha Kaakha (2003) and Singam (2010) to name a few—are often seen as “normalising” police violence. These movies revolve around central characters, often police officers glorified as “supercops” who resort to custodial violence and encounters for delivery of justice. There has been a shift in recent years to more realistic and critical portrayals exposing systematic issues in the police system, a change attributed to the increase in the public awareness.
The post-2010 movies such as Visaranai (2015), Viduthalai I (2023), Viduthalai II (2025) and Jai Bhim (2021) have exposed police brutality and questioned the status quo of the law-keeping force.
Directed by Vetrimaaran, Visaranai was based on the autobiographical novel, Lock Up, written by auto driver M.Chandrakumar, better known as ‘Auto’ Chandran.
Chandrakumar told ThePrint that the excesses portrayed in the film were not even five percent of what takes place in the real-life incidents.
“I was tortured in police custody in 1983. It’s been more than 40 years. Nothing has changed all these years. Although movies cannot change real life, we believe they at least creates an awareness that when somebody happens to see a police atrocity, they at least question the police, even if they cannot stop it,” he asserted.
Political analyst K.Karthikeyan said that the advent of politically and socially conscious directors in Tamil cinema has shaped the society to an extent.
“After the Sathankulam custodial death in 2020, we are seeing a huge public anger following the death of Ajith. This has not been the case before, since it was almost normalised in the society. Even this anger is not just due to movies, but a cumulative effect of what the people face in day-to-day life and the day-to-day news they hear about the police excesses,” Karthikeyan told ThePrint.
(Edited by Tony Rai)