CUSTODIAL OFFENCES- A CRIME AGAINST LAW AND ORDER

Abstract

Custodial means in the custody of someone who is responsible for taking care of someone. Recently, everyone is talking about custodial death, and all such offences that are committed in custody. Now what custody they are talking about, this custody is nothing but police custody or judicial custody. Custodial offences are not new to our society but now this offence is considered as a heinous offence by the public and national human right commission after the case of Mr Jayaraj and Mr Bennicks a father and son who died in Police custody in Tamil Nadu. A family of the deceased alleged that they were brutally beaten and killed by the police personnel. According to the media, they were arrested because of a lockdown violation and found dead the next day in police custody in Thoothukudi, Tamil Nadu. According to an Article 

Published in Newspaper “THE HINDU” report says that there are five custodial deaths in India daily. And in 2019 a total of 1,731 people died in custody.  

“The recent death following alleged custodial torture of P Jeyaraj and his son Bennix in Tamil Nadu has put the spotlight back on the case. Justice Basu, who now heads an NGO called the National Committee for Legal Aid Services, recalls, “One day, three men approached me to represent one of their friends who used to be a part of the Naxalite movement but had disassociated himself from it and had been picked up by the police. They said they were not aware of even the police station where he had been taken… I deployed my juniors in different courtrooms, but the youth wasn’t produced in court for three-four days. We eventually found he had been kept in what was a torture house near Alipore (in south Kolkata). I posted some people in a tea stall outside the house and they confirmed they could hear loud cries of pain from inside. I approached the magistrate to order the police to produce him in court.” 

After he was brought before court, the man was let off. 

Basu says the young man was not alone. Many youths with suspected Naxal links were picked up by the police across the state at the time, a large number of whom were not produced before a magistrate within the stipulated 24 hours, and several ended up dead in “encounters”. Despite two inquiry commissions set up by the Left Front government after it came to power in 1977, the truth of the killings remains unknown. “The commissions submitted their reports but they were never made public,” says CPI (M-L) Liberation leader Abhijit Majumdar, son of the 

Naxalbari movement leader Charu Majumdar.”i