The Karnataka High Court on Wednesday, April 8, refused to issue notice to the state government regarding the formulation of protocol to prevent custodial torture in a public interest litigation filed by the People’s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL) and the Association of Prisoners’ Families for Justice (APFJ).
The bench of Chief Justice Vibhu Bakhru and Justice CM Poonacha however, issued notice to the state government to file a response over the death of Darshan, a Dalit man in Bengaluru, allegedly due to custodial torture.
“We are only issuing notice on the specific case investigation, not issuing notice on other prayers,” the court orally observed, according to LiveLaw. The next hearing is on July 15.
When the matter came up for hearing, the court initially orally observed that there were several court rulings on the directions that the petitioners had sought.
Advocates representing the petitioners then clarified that they were seeking directions regarding custodial torture and not custodial death.
When the court said that custodial torture too had been addressed by the courts, the advocates for the petitioners said that it was not known whether the DK Basu guidelines on arrest and custodial torture had been effective achieving their purpose.
While hearing the DK Basu vs State of West Bengal case, the Supreme Court had in 1996 laid down guidelines to be followed while making arrests. These include the medical examination of the arrestee every 48 hours during detention.
Other measures include arrestees being entitled to having one person interested in his well-being present informed of the arrest, notifying the family of the arrestee within a stipulated period, and informing the arrestee of these rights.
The bench said that arrest procedure had already been laid down. “If in some cases it gets violated, in those specific cases, it can be done … but we can't give blanket directions,” the court orally observed.
Other directions that the PIL sought included the formation of a committee chaired by a retired high court judge to monitor investigations into custodial deaths over the past five years; a comprehensive protocol for prevention of custodial torture and deaths, and stringent action against accused police personnel.
Pointing out that no accused police personnel had been arrested, the petitioners also sought a Special Investigation Team (SIT) to investigate Darshan’s death.
One of the accused police officers, Viveknagar station inspector Venkatesh HR has since obtained anticipatory bail.
Twenty-three-year-old Darshan, a Dalit resident of Sonnenahalli in Koramangala, died on November 26, 2025, at Unity Social Service Rehab Centre, a privately-run rehabilitation clinic in Nelamangala on the outskirts of Bengaluru.
Darshan’s mother Adilkashmi had alleged that the police tortured her son for several days, to the extent that he could not walk. PUCL and APFJ, which conducted a fact-finding, have alleged that the police had illegally detained Darshan as they had not provided any records to the family for his arrest.