02/07/2020 - Government Policies

KEY POINTS

·         The important DK Basu judgments, since 1987. Starting with a letter complaint of 1986, this converted PIL spawned four crucial and comprehensive judgments — in 1996, twice in 2001 and in 2015, laying down over 20 commandments.

·         Additionally, it led to at least five other procedural, monitoring and coordinating judicial orders, in the best traditions of continuing mandamus.

·         The first 11 commandments in 1996, therefore, focused on vital processual safeguards: All officials must carry name tags and full identification, arrest memo must be prepared, containing all details regarding time and place of arrest, attested by one family member or respectable member of the locality.

·         The location of arrest must be intimated to one family or next friend, details notified to the nearest legal aid organisation and arrestee must be made known of each DK Basu right, all such compliances must be recorded in the police register, he must get periodical medical examination, inspection memo must be signed by arrestee also and all such information must be centralised in a central police control room.

·         The guidelines emphasised that existing simple but potent powers for magisterial inquiries under the CrPC were lackadaisical and must be completed in four months, unless sessions court judges recorded reasons for extension. It also directed SHRCs to be set up expeditiously in each part of India.

·         The as yet unused power of setting up human rights courts under Section 30 of the NHRC Act was directed to be operationalised. All prisons had to have CCTVs within one year — a similar direction sought by me for all police stations was given as a court exhortation to start a phase-wise CCTV in every police station without formulating it as a mandatory direction.

·         It was directed that non-official visitors would do surprise checks on prisons and police stations and prosecutions and departmental action were unhesitatingly mandated.

·         DK Basu is all-encompassing, loophole covering and makes absolutely no such distinction amidst categories of custody. A 1985 Law Commission report directing enactment of section 114-B into our Evidence Act, raising a rebuttable presumption of culpability against the police if anyone in their custody dies or is found with torture, has still not become law, despite a bill introduced as late as 2017. 

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