Allahabad High Court raps NHRC for closing 2009 custodial death case after taking police report as gospel truth

The Allahabad High Court has censured the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) for accepting the police version as gospel truth and closing a case of custodial death of a disabled person.

The victim Nahar Singh @ Sneh had been found dead in a police lockup in 2009. NHRC in 2011 closed the case after recording that the victim had committed suicide “on account of frustration from love affair” and therefore, the police personnel could not be blamed for any negligence.

However, the matter remained alive due to the pendency of a public interest litigation (PIL) petition filed by Association for Advocacy and Legal Initiatives in 2010 seeking probe into Nahar Singh’s death.

In an order passed on May 18, a Division Bench of Justice Atul Sreedharan and Justice Siddharth Nandan said that the manner in which the NHRC investigated the case was most disappointing. 

It found that NHRC had made no attempt to record the statement of the victim’s father or any other related witnesses. It added that even the statements of the girl, with whom the victim was in relationship, was not recorded.

“Instead, the report of the NHRC has simply accepted the reports given by the SDM and the police as gospel truth without appreciating that in a case of custodial death, the police and the State administration are the most interested parties in order to hush up the crime and pass the same off as a suicide. If this is all that the NHRC was required to do and close the case of custodial death purely on the version given by the police which is an interested party, without seeking independent evidence from neutral witnesses within the family of the deceased, calls into question the very existence of the NHRC,” the Bench said.

Pertinently, the Bench also took note of the High Court’s failure to adjudicate the matter in a proper and timely manner.

A case of this nature ought to have been concluded within three months from the date of its first listing with sustained pressure on the State to produce the videography, the Court said.

“Disturbingly, the first institution that failed in this endeavour of unearthing the truth is this Court. The subject matter of the PIL was such that it warranted urgency and repeated listings with short dates to protect evidence and ensure their production before this Court for it to satisfy itself, that the contention of the State that the Nahar Singh committed suicide in the urinal of the lock up was true, and that there was no parallel hypothesis to that story,” the order said.

The Court was told by the State last month that videography and photographs related to the case had been sent to the NHRC. Accordingly, it had directed the statutory body to return the documents to the State. 

However, the Court in its May 18 order expressed doubt over the State's claim as the NHRC report had not recorded anything about the video or photographs in its report. Therefore, there is reasonable cause to believe that the videography always remained with the police, the Bench said.

The Court, therefore, directed the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) to trace the evidence.

“As repeated attempts by this Court to secure the videography relevant in this case, which was done almost sixteen years ago have borne no fruit and with the State and the police being evasive in their response, this Court directs the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) through its ACB office at Ghaziabad, to secure those video recordings within a period of sixty days from the date of this order,” the Bench ordered.

The Court also took exception to its own failure to decide the case in a timely manner.

The procedural delay of sixteen years in this case has given an opportunity to the police and the State to cover their tracks in a manner that the truth remains obscured. 

The attempts to now lay hands on the videographic evidence gets obfuscated on account of this delay, the Bench said.

It observed that there was reasonable suspicion that Nahar Singh may have been first strangulated and then, to escape charges of custodial death or murder, his body was strung up in the urinal side inside the lockup by the police personnel.

“The continued attempts by this Court to secure the videography are on account of an observation in the postmortem report, which while recording the external ante-mortem injuries, notes the presence of a knot mark/knot impression on the right side behind the ear. The same is inconsistent with the story of the police which says that the deceased hanged himself using his leather belt. If that be the case, the doctor conducting the postmortem should have seen the impression of the belt buckle on the neck and not a knot mark,” it added.

The matter will be heard next on August 10.

[Read Order]