The Supreme Court on Monday deferred the pleas concerning custodial torture to October 7th, 2020 and informed Amicus Curiae Senior Advocate Dr. Abhisehek Manu Singhvi to commence the arguments when the pleas are taken up.
A bench comprising of Justices UU Lalit, Ajay Rastogi and Vineet Saran was hearing a batch of petitions regarding the need for elaborate guidelines to ensure the elimination of custodial torture. The pleas had been filed in the wake of the horrific incident of custodial deaths of the father-son duo of Jayaraj and Bennix in Tamil Nadu in June 2020.
Dr, Singhvi who also acted as Amicus Curiae in the 1996 case of DK Basu v. State of West Bengal, has filed an Application seeking for the revival of the proceedings in the landmark case. It further states that there has been an increasing trend of normalizing of custodial deaths which necessitate the need for a robust, uniform, effective and working investigation and mortaring apparatus.
The said application also highlights the huge increase in custodial violence and related crimes as per the statistics provided by the National Crime Record Bureau.
The petitioner stated that there has been a lack of implementation of the guidelines as passed by the Supreme Court in cases of Prakash Singh v. Union of India and DK Basu v. State of West Bengal.
In the above background, the plea prays for issuance and laying down of guidelines to fill the gaping lacunae in the Indian Legal System and for ensuring an effective and purposeful framework and its enforcement to fulfill the Constitutional obligation of ensuring and securing the right to life and to live with Human dignity and prevention of plenary and inherent power of the Supreme Court under Article 142 of the Constitution of India.
