1980 INSC 0149
                                                    Raghbir Singh

                                                           Vs

                                                  State of Haryana

                              Special Leave Petition (Criminal) No. 679 of 1980

                                  (V. R. Krishna Iyer, E. S. Venkataramiah JJ)

                                                      31.03.1980

                                                        ORDER

KRISHNA IYER, J. ­

1. The criminal scenario with a tragic crescendo which has been unfurled in this special leave
petition starts with a bunch of 'suspects' being brought up to the police post which was in the charge
of the petitioner, an Assistant Sub-Inspector. A case of theft in some officer's house had been
reported to the police the previous night and so as part of the investigation suspects were picked up
and suffered, as part of the process of 'investigation', severe flagellation. Chhabila, one of those so
tortured succumbed to his injuries. This triggered off investigation into the murderous conduct of
the investigator, the petitioner and another. Medical examination revealed the cruel cause of death as
asphyxiation. One of the injuries which, according to the doctor, made the deceased unconscious
was torture on both the soles of the feet of the victim. A trial for murder followed, a conviction
under Section 302 was entered and eventually the High Court confirmed the conviction and
sentence of life imprisonment so far as the petitioner was concerned. A false explanation of suicidal
hanging was set up by the police officer-accused but this was rejected and eventually, on a study of
the circumstances and the incontrovertible facts of flagellation and asphyxiation within police
premises and the testimony of eyewitnesses about nocturnal detention within the police station and
beating up of the victim the courts below concurrently found the guilt of the petitioner proved
beyond reasonable doubt. Strenuous submissions have been made to us by Shri Mulla to discredit
the prosecution version of murder but we are not in the least convinced that there is any error in the
appreciation or the conclusion.

2. We are deeply disturbed by the diabolical recurrence of police torture resulting in a terrible scare
in the minds of common citizens that their lives and liberty are under a new peril when the
guardians of the law gore human rights to death. The vulnerability of human rights assumes a
traumatic, torturesome poignancy; the violent violation is perpetrated by he police arm of the State
whose function is to protect the citizen and not to commit gruesome offences against them as has
happened in this case. Police lock-up, if reports in newspapers have a streak of credence, are
becoming more and more awesome cells. This development is disastrous to our human rights
awareness and humanist constitutional order.

3. The State, at the highest administrative and political levels, we hope, will organise special
strategies to prevent and punish brutality by police methodology. Otherwise, the credibility of the
rule of law in our Republic vis-a-visa the people of the country will deteriorate.

4. We conclude with the disconcerting note sounded by Abraham Lincoln :
                  If you once forfeit the confidence of your fellow citizens you can never regain their
                  respect and esteem. It is true that you can fool all the people some of the time, and
                  some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.

These observations have become necessary to impress upon the State police echelons the urgency of
stamping out the vice of 'third degree' from the investigative armoury of the police.

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