Taking serious view of the rising cases of custodial deaths in Maharashtra, the Bombay High Court on Wednesday directed the State government to install CCTV cameras in all the rooms and corridors of every police station in the State.
The court has also directed the State to conduct magisterial inquiry against the police officials accused in a custodial death case.
Spelling out a slew of measures for controlling custodial deaths, the court directed the State government to file a compliance report within four weeks. It also said that custodial death cases should be treated on “high-priority basis and a special public prosecutor should be appointed, who should be assisted by a woman public prosecutor.”
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Maharashtra records 23.48 per cent of the custodial deaths in the country. The conviction rate is zero in these cases.
“You should stop custodial interrogation at night,” the Division Bench of Justices V.M. Kanade and P.D. Kode told the government representative. When he said that the question will be solved after the installation of CCTV cameras, the court observed, “Technology is not the answer. The answer should come from within.”