Maintaining law and order: Police forces urgently need legal training

The police are the citizens’ first encounter with the country’s law and justice system. Yet in India, a recent study shows that the police across the country have a significant “disregard for the rule of law”. The latest “Status of Policing in India Report” — titled “Police Torture and (Un)Accountability” — finds that a sizeable proportion of the police force justifies the use of torture and violence in the course of their duties and believes that the forces should be allowed to use torture without fear of punishment. Of those interviewed, 26 per cent “strongly agreed” and 45 per cent “somewhat agreed” with this proposition; only 11 per cent “strongly disagreed” and 13 per cent “somewhat disagreed” with it. This is one aspect of the institutional approach to policing across states. The study, conducted by advocacy group Common Cause in collaboration with Delhi-based think tank Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS), also found that a disturbing proportion of police personnel supported mob vigilantism for some crimes (sexual harassment or child kidnapping) and extra judicial methods of killing “dangerous criminals” rather than giving them a legal trial. In popular parlance, such methods are known as “killed while escaping” or “encounter killings”, which have steadily gained informal acceptance among police establishments. 

These attitudes and acceptance of interrogative coercion can be seen as the grim inheritance of colonial rule, when the British set up the police force in its current form and utilised it as an instrument of oppression. The disturbing point about the findings of this study is that these extreme approaches to law and order persist more than seven decades since Independence, suggesting that the role of the police as an instrument of public service is yet to evolve to suit the needs of a democracy. Remarkably, India is one of the few countries not to have ratified the United Nations (UN) Convention Against Torture, adopted by the UN General Assembly in 1984, nor has it passed a central law to prevent custodial violence. As the report points out, investigating officers often justify torture as the result of being under pressure from their superiors, politicians, or the public. But these excuses often do not stand up to scrutiny. The Punjab and Haryana High Court’s ruling in 2020 that a confession made by an accused in police custody could not be relied on to hold the appellant guilty suggested recognition of this truth. This ruling has been incorporated into the Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam, which replaces the Indian Evidence Act. The Supreme Court has also issued guidelines to prevent unnecessary arrests and detention by police officers and magistrates. 

But a tacit recognition of the problem is not the same as redressing it institutionally. The starting point, as the report highlights, is the need for accurate and credible data. The otherwise detailed National Crime Records Bureau data is inconsistent on this head. The Annual Report of the National Campaign against Torture suggested in 2019 India had 1,723 custodial deaths, or almost five deaths every day. What this data suggests is a systemic failure to enforce the law and lack of adequate training and sensitisation of police personnel. Small wonder, then, that just 33 per cent of Indians characterised the police as generally trustworthy in Ipsos’ annual global trustworthiness index study in 2022. Without trust in the law-enforcement machinery, the road to a Viksit Bharat will be a long one.