-The Indian Express At 158, India’s police to population ratio (police staff per 1,00,000 citizens) is one of the worst in the world. It lags well behind its neighbours. A quick glance at the daily news from around the country throws up story after story of police misbehaviour, great and small. Videos uploaded day after day confirm this is no rarity — a horrific double murder in Tamil Nadu, grossly depraved behaviour...

-The Hindu Over 1,700 custodial deaths recorded between 2001 and 2018 nationwide; only 26 policemen convicted The recent death of a father-son duo from Tamil Nadu, allegedly due to custodial violence, has sparked anger across India. While calls for a fair probe are growing, data show that between 2001 and 2018, only 26 policemen were convicted of custodial violence despite 1,727 such deaths being recorded in India. As most such deaths were attributed...

-The Hindu The Indian police continue to torture suspects in custody as they are rarely punished On October 13, 2019, Pradeep Tomar, a security guard, rushed with his 10-year-old son to Pilkhua police station in Hapur district in Uttar Pradesh. He had been summoned for interrogation in connection with a murder case. The son later said that his father was brutally tortured by the policemen in front of him for hours. When...

-The Indian Express What is needed is ‘ease of policing’, better training and infrastructure Common Cause’s recent survey on the Status of Policing in India is said to have affirmed that the black sheep in the police force find nothing wrong with beating up criminals to extract a confession. It is still, however, too judgemental to suggest that torture is endemic to Indian policing, as Maja Daruwala does (‘Exorcising third-degree’, IE,...

-The Indian Express torture is an endemic characteristic of Indian policing. A commitment to eradicating it requires the police force as a whole to have zero tolerance for the practice besides a specific anti-torture law The home minister’s recent pronouncement that the days of third-degree torture are gone is extraordinarily welcome. His announcement is as much a signal to the security forces to lay off this practice as it is an acknowledgment...