Chhattisgarh High Court Orders ₹2 Lakh Compensation To Woman For Custodial Death Of Son Labelled By Authorities As 'Fall On Railway Line'

The Chhattisgarh High Court has ordered the State to pay rupees two lakhs compensation to a woman whose son died while in police custody. The Division Bench of Chief Justice Ramesh Sinha and Justice Bibhu Datta Guru reiterated that the State is liable to pay compensation in case infringement of right to life is established.“The Courts have time and again deprecated such conduct on the part of the police/jail officials, which is spelt out above, and therefore the compensation, which is to be awarded, should also have a deterrent effect on the State so that its officers should not be encouraged to indulge in such acts which may result in loss of a human life, a fundamental right guaranteed under the Constitution of India,” it said.Case BackgroundThe petitioner, who is the mother of the deceased, filed this writ petition seeking independent investigation into the custodial death of his son Suraj Haththel by agencies like CBI and also, sought a direction to the respondent authorities to immediately furnish the post-mortem report, magisterial inquiry report, CCTV footages from the relevant police stations, and other related documents.In addition to that, she also sought monetary compensation for the unnatural death of his son under police custody. It was submitted on her behalf that though the Magisterial inquiry found that the deceased died due to 'myocardial infection' as he was suffering from coronary arteries disease, the post-mortem report suggested multiple abrasions and lacerated wound.It was argued that the State made a calculated attempt to obscure the truth and evade accountability for the custodial torture and subsequent death of the deceased. However, the petitioner submitted that the State's version of events is riddled with contradictions and procedural irregularities. The counsel for the petitioner argued that the State's claim that the deceased sustained injuries due to a "fall on the railway line" is implausible and unsupported by evidence as the photographs of the deceased's body unequivocally reveal multiple severe injuries, including contusions, lacerations, and marks consistent with blunt force trauma, which cannot be attributed to a mere accident. It was further argued that even the judicial inquiry report admits that CCTV footage from the Police Station was submitted only for the truncated period of 11:00 PM to 02:47 AM on the night of the incident. Importantly, the footage after 02:47 AM, when the deceased was allegedly taken out of the police station, is conspicuously missing.The State, however, submitted that the CCTV system malfunctioned after 02:47 AM due to a “power cut". The petitioner vehemently challenged such claim to be false as the Magistrate explicitly noted that no evidence was produced to substantiate the alleged electricity failure. This omission, it was contended, confirms that the footage was deliberately withheld or destroyed to erase evidence of custodial violence.Court's FindingsAfter hearing the submissions of both the parties, the Court referred to a catena of precedents dealing with custodial violence and liability of the State therefor. Reference was made to landmark judgments of the Apex Court in Saheli v. Commissioner of Police (1989), Smt. Nilabati Behera v. State of Orissa (1993), D.K. Basu v. State of West Bengal (1996), Malkiat Singh v. State of U.P. (1997) and Ajab Singh v. State of U.P. (2000).The Court also quoted the following observation made by the Supreme Court In Re-Inhuman Conditions in 1382 Prisons (2017) –“Human rights are not dependent on the status of a person but are universal in nature. Once the issue is looked at from this perspective, it will be appreciated that merely because a person is accused of a crime or is the perpetrator of a crime and in prison custody, that person could nevertheless be a victim of an unnatural death. Hence the need to compensate the next of kin.”Having regard for the aforesaid judgments, the Bench held that for the violation of fundamental rights of a citizen by the State or its servants, in the purported exercise of their powers, the affected citizen can resort to the remedy in public law by taking recourse to Article 226 of the Constitution.“It further makes it clear that the compensation is in the nature of "exemplary damages" awarded against the wrongdoer for the breach of its public law duty and is independent of the rights available to the aggrieved party to claim compensation under the private law in an action based on tort, through a suit instituted in a Court of competent jurisdiction or/and prosecute the offender under the penal law. Thus, it is settled law that compensation can be awarded for violation of fundamental rights in public law domain,” it added.Therefore, it held that the petitioner, being the mother of the deceased, is entitled to compensation for wrongful loss of her son and the State being the employer of the employees on account of whose negligence the death of deceased took place, is...

Chhattisgarh High Court Orders ₹2 Lakh Compensation To Woman For Custodial Death Of Son Labelled By Authorities As 'Fall On Railway Line'

Jyoti Prakash Dutta

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