Reply over custodial death, says Bombay High Court

The Bombay high court has asked the state government to reply whether the state is going to act against those police officers who were allegedly responsible for the death of a prisoner.

The court asked the state to submit its reply by August 24.

A division bench of Justice Abhay Oka and Justice A.A. Sayed was hearing a suo-moto petition against officers of the Thane Central Jail.

The petition stated that in the year 1997, an inmate named Robert Almeida was beaten to death by the Thane prison police. This incident was seen by six other inmates and they had narrated the entire incident to the magistrate when they were being produced for their personal cases.

Apart from the six eyewitnesses, there were five other witnesses.

The magistrate then enquired into the incident and found nothing in the case.

At the hearing, the police produced six eyewitnesses and said the other five witnesses were missing after being released.

During the previous hearing in July, the state government had said that the police had already filed closure report in this matter and the magistrate concerned had accepted that report.

But the high court refused to accept this explanation. “We are unable to believe that the police can’t trace any of these persons,” the court said. It also warned that if the jail has no record of the witnesses, the court would direct the state DGP to inquire into the issue.

On Tuesday, additional public prosecutor Mankunwar Deshmukh informed the court that the state government has set up a committee to find out those registrars and documents in which details of the said witnesses were mentioned and said they would submit that report “very soon in front of the court.”

The court then asked the state to reply whether it is going to take action against those police officers or not. Background of the case Robert Almeida was arrested by the Vikhroli police for assaulting his father while the former was drunk. A day later, on August 30, 1996 he was shifted to Thane prison and was found dead on September1, 1996, with injury marks on his body. The post-mortem report said that he had died of brain haemorrhage. A police inquiry at that time concluded Almeida was “behaving in an insane way” since he was arrested, and had caused the injuries himself. An activist, N.R.Soni, wrote to the HC referring to three deaths at the prison and it was converted into suo-moto PIL in 1997. A magisterial inquiry took note of a letter written by other undertrial prisoners who were in the same cell. The letter said Almeida was beaten by six to seven policemen with belts and kicked with spiked shoes.

State tops death list According to the National Crime record Bureau (NCRB), Maharashtra ranks the highest in custodial deaths with a total of 35 people who died in police lockups in 2013. From 1999 to 2013, 1,418 deaths occurred in custody all over India, with 333 among them in Maharashtra.