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This story is part of our series on Police Impunity in India. Reporters from The News Minute and Newslaundry are travelling across states to bring you stories of negligence and abuse of power by the police, and how minorities and marginalised sections suffer the most.
Around 2 in the afternoon on February 13 this year, Gunasekaran, an advocate based in Tamil Nadu’s Karur, got a call from Kalimuthu, a young advocate who worked with him. Kalimuthu’s classmate from law college, Sanker, had died earlier that day at the Government Medical College Hospital while in judicial custody. Could Gunasekaran help with the legal procedures?
The Lalapet police in Karur had arrested Sanker on February 6 when he tried to intervene in a fight between two groups in his village of Kammanallur. On February 8, he was admitted to the hospital with a broken leg in a cast. The bones had not healed well and he was to undergo surgery on February 13.
On Kalimuthu’s request, Gunasekaran drafted a memorandum outlining the procedures laid down by the Madras High Court in the Santhosh vs Madurai Deputy Collector case. It said that the post-mortem in cases of custodial deaths should be done in daylight, the family should be allowed to see the body before the post-mortem, and that authorities should not insist on last rites until the family is satisfied with the post-mortem report.
Sanker’s mother gave a copy of the memorandum to the hospital dean, and to the judicial magistrate who arrived around 5 pm for the inquest. After accepting the memorandum, the judicial magistrate took Sanker’s family to see his body but did not permit them to take photos.
Around 7 pm, the magistrate took Sanker’s family members to the police outpost at the hospital and recorded their statements. At this point, a senior police officer arrived and claimed that they had obtained special permission from the Karur District Collector to conduct the post-mortem. The judicial magistrate left to see the post-mortem. Sanker’s family, who hadn’t eaten anything since that morning, stepped out to have tea at a small shop opposite the hospital.
The police swooped in. What followed was a very effective intimidation tactic, according to Gunasekaran.
“The police surrounded Sanker’s family and told them that they could not leave the hospital. I tried to intervene, but the police abused me. One senior officer told me, ‘You’re the one who’s instigating these people. Don’t play politics over someone’s death’,” Gunasekaran said.
When he demanded that the police speak to him respectfully, the police snatched the key of his two-wheeler, and took both him and Sanker’s family to the police outpost. Soon after that, the police confined Sanker’s family–three of the five family members were women–in one police van and Gunasekaran in another.
“I was guarded by around 10-15 cops and made to sit in the van for several hours,” Gunasekaran said.
When the magistrate returned to the outpost after the post-mortem, he found neither the family nor the advocates around. The police then brought only Sanker’s mother to the outpost and the magistrate told her that the family could take the body but said that it should be buried.
The police then took Sanker’s mother and her family back to Kammanallur in a police van.
“The police got the village elders and local DMK leaders to put pressure on Sanker’s family by saying that women should not go to the crematorium. They took Sanker’s body in an ambulance to the crematorium and burned the body at around 1 am. Nobody from his family was present,” Gunasekaran said. Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) is currently the party in power in Tamil Nadu.
While all this was happening, Gunasekaran had been confined to the police van at the government hospital. Around 1 am, they took him to the Pasupathipalayam station and booked him for obstructing the police. He could go home only after his friend came and bailed him out.
The police intimidated Sanker’s family into silence, Gunasekaran alleged. With the body cremated, there is simply no way to find out what really happened to Sanker, even as allegations of torture against the Tamil Nadu police are on the rise.
That many people die in India in police and judicial custody, or soon after they are released from police custody, is an undeniable reality—even the Supreme Court has taken note of it and Union Home Minister Amit Shah indirectly admitted to it. What is disputed, however, is the extent of alleged custodial torture and the number of deaths due to it. Proving allegations of torture in court and linking them to custodial deaths to hold the accused officers accountable is not easy.
TNM investigated allegations of custodial deaths due to torture in Karnataka and Tamil Nadu for our series on police impunity. We found that the police have tried and tested methods to get rid of the most important evidence in custodial deaths—the body.
When the deceased person’s grieving relatives resist attempts to get them to cremate the body and muster the courage to file complaints, simple acts of commission and omission during the police investigation magically turn the large number of alleged custodial deaths reported in the media into single-digit figures that appear in the annual National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) reports.
Different official agencies record different numbers and the lack of uniformity in recording the data prevents a reliable estimate of custodial deaths.
The NCRB and the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) offer different, and sometimes contradictory, data on custodial deaths across the country. However, figures compiled from media reports by TNM suggest that the numbers might be higher.
The most effective way to impede an investigation is for the police to coerce the family into burning the body, thereby destroying the most important and reliable witness of the alleged crime.
TNM found several such instances in both Tamil Nadu and Karnataka.
On the night of February 24, eleven days after Sanker’s death in Karur, 900 km away Lalitabai sat in protest outside the Kalaburagi Police Commissioner’s office in Karnataka, demanding justice for her son.
Lalitabai, who belongs to the Scheduled Caste Banjara community, alleged that her son Krishna V Rathod died of custodial torture at the Roza police station and that they had been forced to burn his body that morning.
The Roza police allegedly kept Krishna in custody for six days to question him about the kidnapping of a woman.
“The police tortured him for several days demanding he show them where the kidnapped woman’s body was,” Ramachandra Jadhav, head of the Banjara Vidyavardhaka Sangha, told TNM.
Krishna’s parents last saw him on the evening of February 23. Hours later, in the dead of the night, the police turned up at the family’s house in Hadgil Haruti, a village near Kalaburagi city, and forced the family to come with them to the police station.
“They were shown Krishna’s body around 10 am on February 24, forced to sign a blank sheet of paper, and cremate the body that afternoon,” Ramachandra told TNM.
With the bodies cremated, there is simply no way to either prove or disprove allegations surrounding the deaths of Sanker and Krishna Rathod—both of whom belong to the Scheduled Castes. Neither of their families are willing to talk to activists or the media about their deaths.
Some families do manage to thwart the police’s attempts to coerce them into cremating the body, but face tremendous pressure and intimidation.
“The police told us to cremate the body but we fought with them. We said we would bury our brother according to our family’s ways,” said Vijay, whose brother Vignesh died three years ago allegedly due to torture by the Chennai police.
Vignesh, a resident of Pattinapakkam, was picked up by the G5 Secretariat Colony police on April 18, 2022, along with another man for allegedly possessing marijuana and alcohol. The next day, he was dead.
The police claim that he died of seizures, but his family maintains that he had no illness and alleges that he was tortured by the police.
TNM had previously reported that the post-mortem report listed several bruises all over Vignesh’s body, including bruises, swelling, cuts and a fracture.
Initially, it was Vignesh’s oldest brother Vinod who led the fight to demand accountability from the police. Vinod told TNM that after the post-mortem, the police took his body from Kilpauk Medical College to Krishnampet crematorium and insisted that he be cremated.
It was only after they sought the intervention of Judicial Magistrate Yashwantrao Ingersol, who was inquiring into the death, that the police backed off, and Vignesh’s family could perform his last rites according to their customs.
Now, three years later, Vinod wants nothing more to do with Vignesh’s case. “The police kept saying that we are inviting trouble by pursuing a case against them. They intimidated Vinod a lot,” Vijay said.
The family of 31-year-old Rajasekar, who died on June 12, 2022 allegedly due to police torture, also levelled similar allegations against the Chennai police.
Rajasekar was picked up by the P6 Kodungaiyur police on June 12, 2022 for questioning in connection with a jewellery theft case and died a few hours later.
The post-mortem report says he had several external injuries, including bruises on his left thigh and right knee, which had likely occurred about 18-24 hours before his death; an abrasion on his right forearm likely caused within 24 hours prior to his death; and 12 abrasions on his left leg estimated to be inflicted between three and five days before his death.
“The police told us to complete the final rites in one hour and cremate his body. We refused. We told them we will take our time and do it as we wished. We buried him,” Murugan, Rajasekar’s stepfather, told TNM.
When the police fail in their attempt to coerce the families to burn the body of the person who died in custody, they often fall back on other tactics, like threats and money.
Vijay alleged that after Vignesh’s death, Mohan Das, an inspector at the Thousand Lights police station, got involved even though it was the G5 Secretariat Colony police who had picked up Vignesh.
Vijay alleged that Mohan Das gave Vinod Rs 1 lakh in cash along with a slip that had a phone number written on it. “Mohas Das told my brother Vinod to take the money and not pursue any case, and if we needed more money, we could call that number,” Vijay alleged.
Vijay had no idea this had happened until after they buried Vignesh. “Vinod showed me the cash and said Mohan Das gave him the money. I was taken aback. I asked him why he took it. He said he didn’t know what else to do,” Vijay said.
The family found some support when Asirvadam, a Chengalpattu-based activist with the NGO People’s Watch, reached out. Asirvadam, who has extensively documented police torture, custodial deaths, and encounter deaths in Tamil Nadu, arranged for the money to be kept at an NGO. “The money is still there, untouched, at a Makkal Mandram in Kancheepuram district,” Vijay told TNM.
On the very day that Rajasekar died in Kodungaiyur, his family was allegedly offered a few lakh rupees through a lawyer to buy their silence.
The police claimed that Rajasekar developed uneasiness during questioning and collapsed.
Murugan, Rajasekar’s stepfather, told TNM that a lawyer, who had previously helped Rajasekar, reached out to them. “He called us and said he saw the news. He promised to get us justice and government compensation. We thought he would help,” Murugan said.
But they were in for a shock. “He discussed something with a group of police officers and said the police will first give us Rs 2 lakh for the final rites and that we will eventually get more, around Rs 7 or 10 lakh.”
Furious, the family refused the money and even spoke about it to media outlets that covered their case, including TNM. After that, the lawyer backed off. However, the intimidation continued and it wasn’t always clear who was behind it.
For Rajasekar’s family, the first inkling that something was amiss was when Murugan got a call on the evening of June 12, 2022, from Tamizhvanan, a local politician and a member of the Alamathi village panchayat.
“He told me to come to the Kodungaiyur police station, that the police had picked up my son. I told him I worked as a security guard and couldn’t leave all of a sudden. He then said, ‘You will come today, wait and watch’. After some time, my wife Usha Rani called and said they had killed Rajasekar,” said Murugan.
It wasn’t the police who told Usha Rani about her son’s death. “My granddaughter saw it on the news. She told me that they are showing her uncle’s photo on TV. I then saw it and found out that my son was dead. After that Tamizhvanan came home and told me [about Rajasekar’s death].”
After the family refused the money offered by the lawyer, Asirvadam advised them to file a complaint with the Tamil Nadu Human Rights Commission.
Even after they went public with the allegations of being offered money, the intimidation continued.
Usha Rani recounted how a man dressed like a mendicant turned up at their house. “He was dressed in kaavi (ochre) clothes, wearing a rudraksha malai, and had a long beard.”
The man asked for food, and when Murugan went to buy some, the man began talking about their dead son.
“He said that my son was a criminal and that the Kodungaiyur inspector Miller is a good man. He said we were wrongly accusing him of police torture. As he talked, he opened his bag, which had a lot of money and started counting it,” Usha Rani said.
The Kodungaiyur station Inspector George Miller Ponraj, Sub Inspector Kanniyappan, constables Jayasekhar, Manivannan, and Sathiyamoorthy were suspended in connection with the case.
When Usha Rani demanded to know who the saint-man was, he said, “Oh, I thought I would give you this money, but you talk too much.” He left when Usha Rani shouted at him.
When Usha Rani, Murugan, and Rajasekar’s sister Ammu saw his body before the post-mortem, he wasn’t wearing the yellow shirt and maroon lungi that he had left the house in.
“His clothes were missing. He was only wearing his vest and someone else’s socks. There were footprints on his white vest. That means the police stamped on his chest. There were so many bruises on his hands. His left leg was twisted. When I lifted his head, blood came gushing out of his mouth and nose,” Ammu said.
After the post-mortem was done, two men standing outside the mortuary asked them why they were “creating such a scene”. “They told us to sign [the documents], take the body, and finish the final rites soon. We don’t even know who those people were,” Ammu said.
Vijay, Vignesh’s brother, also alleged pressure from politicians. “DMK councillor Kamaraj came to see us and said he will set up a shop for each of us brothers and asked us to not take this case forward. We had Asirvadham sir’s support, so we didn’t back down.”
While People’s Watch has supported the families of many victims of police torture and custodial death in Tamil Nadu, in Bengaluru’s Jolly Mohalla, the residents banded together when they heard that a young man from their neighbourhood had died in police custody.
Twenty-two-year-old Vinod died on January 5, 2023, in police custody. TNM had previously reported that the Cottonpet police in Bengaluru had picked him up around 4 pm the previous day in connection with a case from 2017.
Jolly Mohalla’s residents spoke freely about what had happened the day Vinod died, and how over the next few days they took on the police and wrote about Vinod’s death to every authority they could think of. None of the residents, however, were willing to let their names be used for this story due to fear of the police.
“There is no one here who doesn’t fear the police, even if they’re otherwise fearless. The police can stop you in the middle of the street and put a case on you. That fear is always there,” said Divya (name changed), a woman in her 30s, who was one of the first to hear of Vinod’s death. The police followed her and several other people from the locality for days after Vinod’s death.
She said that the residents mobilised people so that there was one group each at the mortuary of Victoria Hospital in Chamarajpet, the Karnataka State Human Rights Commission in MS Building, and at the office of the Deputy Commissioner of Police (West) in Upparpet.
Asked why she and others rallied around to support Vinod’s brother Subramani, Divya said, “The dead man will not come back, but this should not happen to anybody else in our locality. That’s why we intervened.”
Divya also alleged that a Congress MLA’s people tried to get them to stop pursuing the case when she and other neighbours were at the mortuary with Vinod’s brother Subramani. “His man Prasad tried to talk to Subramani, but we didn’t let him anywhere near him. We feared that Prasad would get to Subramani.”
In both Karur and Jolly Mohalla, it was evident that the police employed their area domination exercises—using their sheer numerical strength to occupy a place to intimidate and physically prevent families, neighbours, and activists from communicating with each other and undermine access to justice in the crucial hours after a death in their custody.
The atmosphere was tense in Jolly Mohalla since early morning on the day of Vinod’s death. Divya and others were organising people to see Vinod’s body at the Victoria Hospital mortuary because they suspected that he was tortured.
“The police had stationed a van here. It scared people. Still, we managed to gather around 50-60 people. It took us a long time to reach the mortuary [at Victoria Hospital] after taking detours within the area to avoid the police,” Divya told TNM. Jolly Mohalla is about a 15-minute walk from Victoria Hospital.
Divya said that the police woke Kala, Vinod’s mother, around 3 am and took her to the hospital to see her son’s body. “They did not allow any of us to speak to her. None of us were even allowed to see the body,” Divya said.
Mallige (name changed), another resident of Jolly Mohalla, said Kala was later taken to the police station. “They made her sit there for hours and would not let us talk to her.”
Similar tactics were used by the police in Karur after Sanker’s death, as advocate Gunasekaran explained. “The police feared that the family would leave the body at the hospital and later file a case in the High Court. If that happened, the police would have a big problem on their hands. They knew I was a part of Joint Action Against Custodial Torture (JAACT) and that I was an advocate. They felt that if I got involved, they could find themselves booked. The magistrate was receptive. Had [the family and lawyers] not been arrested, we would not have accepted the body.”
Gunasekaran added that cops in mufti (plainclothes) kept watch outside Sanker’s home for the next few days and noted who was coming and going. “They made sure that the family did not step out or talk to anyone from outside. Some of us tried to tell the family that they could file a case against the police, but they were scared. The police did not allow anyone from outside to approach the family.”
Even in Chennai, after Vignesh’s death in custody, the police maintained tight control when his last rites were about to be performed.
“There was massive security at Krishnampet crematorium, police personnel were present in large numbers and did not allow many people to attend the funeral,” a friend of Vignesh’s who attended the funeral told TNM at the time.
Apart from hiding the cause of death, the police in many cases also tried to cover up the crime through off-record ‘compromise’ discussions with the victims’ families or through local political workers.
In Tamil Nadu’s Sivaganga district, Ajith Kumar (29), a temporary security guard at a temple, died on June 29 this year, after allegedly being brutally tortured in illegal custody. Following this, local DMK functionaries visited Ajith’s house and held compromise discussions with the family members.
“Three prominent leaders of the ruling DMK, along with the Deputy Superintendent of Police (DySP), had compromise talks at the Nadar Uravinmurai Kalyana Mandapam at Madappuram to settle the matter. An offer was made to pay Rs 50 lakh to the family of the deceased. The offer also included a government job for the brother of the deceased,” stated Justices SM Subramaniam and AD Maria Clete of the Madurai bench of the Madras High Court, after seeing Ajith Kumar’s preliminary autopsy on July 1.
Activist and executive director of human rights organisation People’s Watch Henri Tiphagne said this is a recurring pattern in custodial violence cases—DMK functionaries arrive soon after such incidents and urge families not to pursue legal action against the police.
“In each and every case, the DMK interferes. I even asked Chief Minister MK Stalin to write in Murasoli (the DMK party mouthpiece), asking his cadres not to interfere with police investigations. The cadres intervene directly or through the district collector. In the Villupuram Raja case, the collector refused to exhume the body citing ‘huge crowds’. Then I had to go to the court and get the order,” Henri said.
The case Henri referred to happened in April 2024. The Tamil Nadu police arrested a 48-year-old man named Raja for allegedly selling a small quantity of liquor illegally. He died later in the day on the way to the hospital. His family alleged that he was tortured in custody, which the police denied. Raja’s body was exhumed for a second post-mortem on the orders of the Madras High Court.
Subash (name changed), a Bengaluru slum resident in his twenties, is accused in several cases. He alleged that he has been tortured more than once by the police.
But police stations aren’t in isolated areas. Wouldn’t people hear screams if someone was being tortured?
That is not the case, Subash explained, describing the ‘torture room’ in a particular police station in Bengaluru. “They have a room upstairs. It’s a big room at the end of a corridor. One policeman will hold your arms while your legs are stretched out and two others will hit the underside of your feet. No one can hear anything from the outside. Police talk about the law, but they’re the ones who beat you up,” he told TNM.
When asked why no one ever said anything when produced before a magistrate, Subash was dismissive. “They take you to a judge only if you can’t pay them to let you go. They tell you to walk properly in front of the judge and say that the police did not beat you.”
Subash said the police use threats to make sure their captives know that they have the upper hand. “They say, ‘We’ll take care of you when you come back.’”
The threats and intimidation described by Subash might seem far-fetched to the privileged with whom the police are usually respectful and law-abiding.
The police’s track record of torture can be traced back to the colonial era. The British East India Company had the causes of torture investigated and the outcome was the Madras Commission Report of 1855. Although it absolved the role of the British, it remains one of the most systemic documents on police torture in India.
Post-independence research indicates that police violence is carried out in the context of law and order duties, crime detection, and to maintain the integrity of the nation state. Some of the worst excesses of the police and armed forces occurred during the Emergency, in the so-called ‘Maoist-infested’ areas, and the insurgencies in the north-eastern states, Punjab, and Jammu and Kashmir.
While the State denies—both in its records and otherwise—that police torture is routinely carried out, the courts have, on the rare occasion, convicted the police of torture resulting in custodial deaths.
While many academics have theorised on why torture continues to persist, the Status of Policing in India report 2025 by Common Cause and the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) gauged the attitudes of the police toward torture. Some of the findings are disturbing.
Police personnel all across India expressed widespread support for the use of torture to obtain information. States with the highest support include Gujarat (63%), followed by Tamil Nadu (56%), while Karnataka ranked ninth at 38% for respondents who expressed “high support”.
The responses expressed varying degrees of support depending on the crime. When police personnel were asked for what offences they found the use of torture acceptable, the respondents appeared to make a distinction between petty offences and serious offences.
As many 63% of the respondents surveyed agreed, either fully or in part, with the use of violence in case of “serious offences for the greater good of society”.
Thirty percent of police personnel felt that third-degree methods in serious cases such as rapes and murders are justified; half of the respondents justified slapping; and 55% justified verbal abuse or threats.
Nine percent of police personnel across India thought that third-degree torture was justifiable in petty cases. Worryingly, that number rose to 30% when it came to serious offences such as rapes and murders.
Forty-nine percent of police personnel across the constabulary, mid-ranking officers, and IPS officers in India believed that it was important for the police to solve a case by any means—ranging from threats to slapping and third-degree methods—rather than strictly follow legal procedures.
When the responses are segregated based on personnel who often carried out interrogations and those who didn’t, the results were startling.
The survey found that police officers who routinely carried out investigations were more likely to justify the use of third-degree methods against the accused in both petty offences as well as serious criminal cases. But officers with over 21 years of experience expressed slightly less support for third-degree methods during interrogation.
“With only a few exceptions … [there is a] trend that police officers who often conduct interrogation of suspects are significantly more inclined towards the use of torture and third-degree. This is consistent with the reality of how torture and violence in custody are perpetrated,” the report said.
When the word ‘torture’ was specifically used in the question, the report found wide support for its use, with the greatest support for crimes against national security, followed by sexual assault, serious crimes such as murder, cases against history-sheeters, and major theft.
“These findings provide empirical evidence that police justify and unreservedly support the use of torture. This in turn reinforces how distant the legal prohibition of torture is from actual policing inclinations and practices. These findings draw attention to the lack of sensitisation of the constabulary and the upper middle ranks, but equally it draws attention to the role played by IPS level officers who too do not seem to be conscientious in following procedures and constitutional safeguards,” the report said.