He had thought custodial violence was a thing of the past. A sitting Supreme Court judge said, in a public address, that he had been forced to think again. In unusually direct terms, Justice Ujjal Bhuyan spoke of a rise in extra-judicial killings, of accused persons taken out at three in the morning to recreate a crime scene, and of the familiar explanations that follow a death in custody, a snatched rifle, a scuffle, a speeding truck. Right-thinking people, he said, are left to wonder whether these are shortcuts to cover the gaps in an investigation. The Constitution, he added, does not approve of such methods.
New Delhi: Supreme Court judge Justice Ujjal Bhuyan has expressed concern over a rise in extra-judicial killings and incidents of police violence in the country, questioning the manner in which accused persons are sometimes taken into police custody and killed in purported encounters, and asking whether such methods are adopted to cover up the shortcomings in an investigation.
He was speaking at a discourse on ethics in criminal litigation, trial by media and the admissibility of statements, organised by the Centre for Discourse on Criminal and Constitutional Jurisprudence, in New Delhi.
‘Forced to reconsider’
The judge said he had once believed custodial violence belonged to the past, only to find himself having to think again.
“I thought custodial violence was a thing of the past. But I was forced to reconsider it. Extra-judicial killings are on the rise in India.”
He questioned the practice of taking an accused person out at unusual hours for exercises such as crime-scene reconstruction, where no urgency was apparent.
“Why do you have to take an accused in police custody to recreate a crime scene at 3 o’clock in the morning? Could you not have waited till sunrise? What is the grave urgency?”
The familiar explanations
Justice Bhuyan referred to the range of explanations that, he said, sometimes follow the death of an accused in custody or during such exercises, that the accused tried to snatch a rifle, that a scuffle broke out during which firing occurred, or that the accused was hit by a speeding truck. He also referred to a case in which an accused was said to have been depressed and to have jumped into a well.
Such incidents, he said, could lead people to ask whether shortcuts were being taken to paper over the weaknesses of an investigation, particularly where investigators already anticipated how a trial would end.
“Right thinking people are forced to think that is it a way to cover up the lacuna in investigation, knowing fully well the outcome of trial, these shortcut methods are adopted.”
Such practices, he emphasised, were inconsistent with the country’s constitutional framework. “Our constitutional system does not approve of these type of situations,” he said.
On police officers assaulting demonstrators
The judge also raised concern over instances of young IPS officers personally attacking demonstrators, echoing remarks he had made at an earlier event on police excesses against protesters.
“But you see young IPS officers personally attacking demonstrators with so much anger on their face. What for? You are a professional police officer, why do you need to get so agitated? Beating up a demonstrator with bare hands.”
Such conduct, he said, raised serious concern about what might happen to a person held in police custody, particularly at night.
“One shudders to think what would happen if such a police officer gets custody at night… Many of us are quite wary of sending people to police custody, not for nothing.”
Why it matters
The remarks are significant because of who is making them and where. A sitting judge of the Supreme Court, speaking on the record, has named extra-judicial killings and custodial violence as a rising problem, and has located the objection where it belongs, in the Constitution, which guarantees that no person may be deprived of life save through the procedure established by law. An encounter death that is in truth a killing outside that procedure is not a shortcut the constitutional scheme permits, whatever the gravity of the crime the deceased was accused of.
The judge’s specific questions, why a crime-scene reconstruction must happen at three in the morning, why the same explanations recur after a custodial death, are pointed because they go to the credibility of the official account rather than to any single case. Courts have, in recent months, scrutinised such narratives closely: the Supreme Court’s own guidelines in the PUCL case require an independent investigation into every encounter death, and several High Courts have questioned stereotyped police versions of how a person in custody came to die. Justice Bhuyan’s comments sit within that judicial concern for accountability, rather than alongside any finding against a particular force.
It bears emphasis that these were observations at a public discourse, not rulings in a case, and they were framed as questions that “right thinking people” are led to ask rather than as findings that any specific death was unlawful. Read that way, the address is a reminder of first principles from the bench: that due process is not a formality to be dispensed with when the outcome seems obvious, that the professional restraint expected of the police does not lapse in the face of a demonstrator or a suspect, and that the strength of a constitutional order is tested precisely in how it treats those accused of the worst offences.
Speaker: Justice Ujjal Bhuyan, Judge, Supreme Court of India
Occasion: Discourse on Ethics in Criminal Litigation, Trial by Media & Admissibility of Statements, organised by the Centre for Discourse on Criminal and Constitutional Jurisprudence, New Delhi
Note: The remarks were made in a public address and do not constitute a ruling or a finding in any pending case.