Accountability And Legal Remedies For Deaths In Police Custody In India: A Human Rights Perspective
- IJLLR Journal
- Nov 9, 2025
- 2 min read
Ishani Bisht, LL.M. (Master of Laws), University Institute of Legal Studies, Chandigarh University, Mohali, Punjab, India.
Dr. Aditya Karwasra, Assistant Professor, University Institute of Legal Studies, Chandigarh University, Mohali, Punjab, India
ABSTRACT
This study examines accountability and legal remedies for deaths in police custody in India through a rights-centred lens anchored in the Constitution, statutory reforms, and international standards. It argues that custodial death is not an aberration of procedure but a breach of the core guarantees of life, dignity, and due process, and that the State’s duties of prevention, investigation, prosecution, and reparation must be made real in practice. The research parses the doctrinal structure after the replacement of the CrPC, IPC, and Evidence Act by the “Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita” (BNSS), the “Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita” (BNS), and the “Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam” (BSA), focusing on inquest and magisterial inquiry, offences targeting coercive extraction of confessions, evidentiary exclusion of police confessions, and prior sanction to prosecute public servants. It reads these regimes alongside constitutional protections under Articles 21, 20(3), and 22, and treaty-based obligations under the ICCPR. It integrates the Minnesota Protocol’s markers of promptness, effectiveness, independence, impartiality, and transparency, and tests domestic practice against those benchmarks. The argument is supported by authoritative sources on the BNSS-BNS-BSA framework, NHRC’s 24-hour reporting and autopsy protocols, and the still- pending ratification of UNCAT, with contemporary statistics indicating continuing custodial mortality across jurisdictions. The study advances that accountability requires four converging levers: rigorous compliance with BNSS inquests and mandatory magistrate inquiries, strict application of BNS offences and BSA exclusions, time-bound sanction decisions under BNSS, and enforceable reparation through constitutional remedies. It contends that surveillance-based safeguards like CCTV with audio, mandated by the Supreme Court, must be embedded with privacy-by-design under the “Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023” to ensure evidentiary integrity without eroding rights. Expected findings include a clarified crosswalk of post-reform provisions, a practicable synthesis of investigation standards, and a structured pathway for stronger remedies within the existing legal architecture.
Keywords: Custodial deaths, Article 21, NHRC, BNSS, BNS, Minnesota Protocol, compensation, sanction, CCTV, police accountability.
