Three developments over the last few days signalled how widespread and normalised has police torture become in a country that calls itself the “mother of democracy”. 

The imaginary of torture animating the Indian police can only be termed as unspeakably sadistic.

This June, in Sivaganga, Tamil Nadu, Ajith Kumar, a security guard working in a temple, was taken into police custody over a complaint of theft. His lifeless body bore innumerable marks of assault including injuries around the anus.

In Jammu and Kashmir, came the news report of the Supreme Court intervening in a case of a local policemen being tortured by his own colleagues in 2023 so brutally that he was left with mutilated genitalia.

The third story was from Mumbai and it unpacked the manner in which the 12 presumed “terrorists” apprehended by the Anti Terrorist Squad for carrying out the 2006 Mumbai train blasts, had been subjected to grave torture to extract confessions from them. The Bombay High Court cited this as one of the reasons why the case the ATS had built had, according to its reading, collapsed. Here again evidence of unimaginable violence emerged, including the prising apart of a person’s legs at an angle of 180 degrees.

Significant as this Bombay High Court judgement is (the Supreme Court has for the moment reserved its judgement on the matter), a Wire article very perceptively pointed out that the it did not identify the sadists in uniform who had carried out this torture, although it could well have (‘7/11 Judgment Fails to Hold Police Accountable For Custodial Torture, Lost Time of Those Acquitted’, July 23). The Wire article goes on to state a well-known reality: “India has had a poor track record on custodial torture and has compounded the issue by refusing to take responsibility for correcting police behavior…(It) has long evaded its responsibility and failed to ratify the United Nations Convention Against Torture (UNCAT).” 

This state of affairs could not have persisted if the Indian media had chosen to enter into that dark labyrinth where police, under the benign gaze of their political masters, perpetrate their monstrous acts in the name of delivering justice. Such a deliberately vicious modus operandi that has carried on in this country for decades without end would not have been possible if vigilant journalists had blown its cover. On the contrary, it would have pressured the Union government to have ratified the United Nations Conventions Against Torture, 1987, and legislate on banning the practice. Instead, according to the Global Torture Index 2025, this country figures in what is deemed as “the high risk category” (‘World Organization Against Torture flags India as “high risk” country for police torture: Some reflections’, The Leaflet, June 26, 2025). The Leaflet article carries the observation of Henri Tiphagne, executive director, People's Watch, that although India has the largest number of human rights institutions in the world, it has not been able to bring a single police officer to trial for the crime of torture. 

There were times when the Indian media actually stirred themselves to do the right thing, and even compete amongst themselves to break such stories. One such moment was when the now defunct weekend magazine, the Calcutta-based Sunday, came out with a cover story on the Bhagalpur blindings in 1980, about how the local police in Bhagalpur, Bihar, had poured acid into the eyes of 33 undertrials. That report, filed by S.N.M. Abdi, egged then Indian Express editor, Arun Shourie, to dispatch post haste his young reporter, Arun Sinha, to investigate the matter and proceed to claim that it was his newspaper that had broken the story. Although that may not quite have been the whole truth, it indicated a refreshing appetite in the media of the day for investigative stories on issues of public concern.

And it worked.

The monstrous Bhagalpur blindings really did stir the national conscience. Time magazine reported on how “a heated 3½-hour session took place in parliament” with Prime Minister Indira Gandhi announcing that her government had begun an investigation of the atrocities. Media doyen P. Raman completes that story: A dissatisfied opposition in the Rajya Sabha staged a walkout. “The government’s assurance that it would order an enquiry by an independent agency and the announcement that the Prime Minister had decided to give ex-gratia relief of Rs 15,000 to each of the victims did not satisfy the Opposition…” (‘Forty Years Ago: Bihar blinding undertrials’, Indian Express, December 2, 2020) 

Since then there have been innumerable and similarly horrendous incidents, but the media’s enthusiasm to investigate them had clearly waned. The torture labyrinth remains intact, impervious to media coverage such as there is.

A great example of this is Tamil Nadu which had once even set up its own commission to study police brutality. The Justice Ismail Commission was mandated to inquire into the treatment accorded to those detained under Maintenance of Internal Security Act (MISA) at the Madras Central Jail in 1996-1997. The Commission exposed how beatings had become so much a part of jail procedure that every detenue was stripped naked on being admitted at the jail gate itself and beaten all the way to the cell. Over the years, assaults of this kind seem to have become part of the DNA of the Tamil Nadu police. The case involving P. Jayraj and his son J. Bennix in the small Tamil Nadu town of Santhankulam in 2020 for the crime of “violating curfew provisions” during the pandemic, also involved torture through beating. 

It was met by an avalanche of coverage – but only after the father and son were rendered corpses. Jinee Lokaneeta, a political science professor in Drew University, writing on the case in a recent book she co-edited, Policing and Violence in India Colonial Legacies and Contemporary Realities (Speaking Tiger, 2025), highlighted the manner in which the jail doctor, Dr Venkatesh,  when called in to examine the severely bleeding men did not feel the need to report on how close to death they were. Lokaneeta points out that the “role of doctors as facilitators of police violence has largely been overlooked in India.”

But what about the role of journalists as facilitators of police violence? The total control on the flow of information from within these torture chambers is what allows the complete and total impunity with which such torture flourishes and the media’s hands-off approach is certainly a contributory factor.  Today, five years later, it needed the death of another detenue to warrant media coverage in the Sivaganga case.

The media needs to penetrate this citadel of crime, but how do they do it? It requires, first of all, a drive to expose it and acquire an understanding of how police immunity flourishes. It requires patiently building up sources within the policing system and the systematic collation of credible data through tools like the Right to Information (RTI) Act. Mediapersons would also do well to educate themselves on how torture works: its techniques and their impacts on the bodies and minds of victims. 

None of this is easy at a time when the ground beneath the feet of the intrepid journalist is rapidly shrinking, given resistance to stories of this kind in the newsroom; given that governments at the state and Centre benefit from the instrumentalisation of torture; given the concerted and on-going assault on RTI and, of course, given the popular glamourisation of the “tough cop who gets things done” through news reportage and popular cinema.

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Radhika’s story: Already forgotten

A story that emerged from Haryana’s Gurugram, and exposed the seething feudal tensions that lie below the surface of supposed prosperity and progress, should have lasted longer in the public consciousness than it did. The shooting down by her own father of Radhika Yadav, a gifted, young woman aspiring to make her mark in the world of tennis as a nurturer of talent, did briefly enjoy shock value and the media ran with the story for a few days. But then it fell out of favour.

How did this happen?

Is it because the attention span of the average human being is today gauged to be less than that of a goldfish (nine seconds, the goldfish’s I mean).

Is it because we are so beset by an unending flow of information of all kinds, good, bad and indifferent, that important stories are soon deprived of the oxygen of public attention?

Is it because there are interests working to stymie the story? 

Perhaps it was for all these reasons that the story of Radhika’s murder sank like a stone even though it deserved to be ingested slowly and analysed over a long time given the important factors that were at play.

The backlash to the initial newspaper and television coverage, which was incidentally sympathetic to the young woman and showcased her achievements prominently, including her wizardry on the courts; tutelage of young players and a reel in which she enacted a romantic scene, wasn’t long in coming. One of her relatives was quoted in a newspaper report as having said, “Yeh log [media] bas uske baap ko criminal saabit kar rahe hain. Haan uske baap ne maara hai, kyunki uske baap ka haqq hai beti pe. (The media is just trying to prove that her father is a criminal. Yes, he killed her, because he has the right over his daughter”, The Hindu, July 14).  The statement reeks of patriarchal barbarism, yet many endorsed it. It was this common sense that had been drilled into murderer-father by his social milieu of Wazirabad (the Haryanavi village from where the family came) that which prodded him to hatch his ghastly plan. His initial note to the police revealed this very clearly: “When I used to go to Wazirabad to get milk, people used to say that you eat the girl’s earnings. Due to which I was very upset. People also used to point fingers at my daughter’s character” (‘When Men Can’t Be Dependents: Radhika Yadav and Kerala's 'Pavada Visa'’, The Wire, July 23).

Although the father did not bring in the communal angle, that ugly dimension quickly reared its head. Mark the posts of one Adarsh Kashyap and, while you are at it, please note the way he introduces himself: “Civil Engineer | IIT Dhanbad grad | Bookworm, shutterbug & home chef | centrist | Designing structures & cooking up ideas | Build Bridges--Not walls|”.

He then proceeds to express his views on the Radhika Yadav murder:  “This is not just a case of Honour killing, it is more of Love Jihad.. Why...? then understand this puzzle of Radhika Yadav case: Read till last Singer and lyricist of the song – Inaam Muhammad Composer – Jameel Ahmad Music Director – Shehzaan Muzeeb Producer – Zeeshan Ahmad Cinematography – Muheeb Sheikh Associate Producer – Anas Muhammad Special Thanks – Muhammad Sahil Actor in the song – Inamul Haq Actress in the song – Radhika Yadav This means it was an entire setup, a complete trap, where a lone Hindu girl was trapped from all sides. And perhaps, her father had already understood this trap. #RadhikaYadav.”

He goes on to clarify that he is not exonerating the father’s actions, but quickly adds, “getting killed by your father is better than dying in fridge with suffering pain.” The last reference was of course to Shraddha Walkar’s case, widely known as the 'fridge murder' case, who was killed by her live-in partner Aftab Poonawalla, who happened to be a Muslim.  

The interesting aspect of this bit of detective work put in by Kashyap was that there is no evidence that Radhika was dating a Muslim. Yet the trope found ready responders on social media.  Kashyap inevitably circles back to the opinion voiced by Radhika’s relatives. He writes, “We need more people like Deepak Yadav. Why...Radhika Yadav's father was not of low, regressive thinking or a patriarchal mindset. He always supported her. He spent Rs 2.5 crore on her tennis training. Radhika Yadav studied at Scottish High International School in Gurugram, which is a premium school with an annual fee of Rs 3 lakhs. She started playing tennis at the age of 15 and achieved a rank of 78 in the AITA (All India Tennis Association) under-18 category. (No father who cares about society’s judgment would allow his daughter to pursue tennis if he didn’t genuinely support her.)” 

But this faultless father, according Kashyap, evidently “lost his mind” when she did not listen to him after he forbade her from talking to Muslims and dating them. Here, Kashyap is running on fiction since there was not a shred of evidence that this was the case. 

It needed another social media commentator, Prateek Sinha, to lend some much needed perspective to Kashyap’s febrile fabrications:

“These are examples of what the BJP/RSS have done to Indian society, and the rot is staring us in the face.

"1) The suggestion here is that the girl was in a relationship with a Muslim man, and therefore deserved to die, and that we need more such fathers who would kill their daughters for this 'crime'. This radicalised mindset is a direct result of the anti-Muslim venom the BJP/RSS have injected into society for decades, intensified further since 2014.

"2) The claim that the girl was in a relationship with a Muslim boy is based on a snapshot from a music video she appeared in a couple of years ago. There is no evidence yet of linking her death to any relationship. Yet all it takes is one photo for social media to run wild with theories. This instinct to find a Muslim conspiracy angle in everything is also a BJP legacy.

"3) That our collective anger can be so easily hijacked by conspiracy theories and falsehoods is another gift of the BJP, with ample help from the Indian mainstream media. 4) The glorification of violence in the name of honour and religion is no longer limited to nameless-faceless accounts. It is now echoed and amplified by many who thrive on outrage and hate. The silence, and in many cases encouragement, from political leaders creates an atmosphere where even the most heinous acts find justification. Lastly, social media platforms have become fertile ground for this hate to spread unchecked. Despite repeated instances of communal incitement, platforms like X, Facebook, and YouTube continue to amplify toxic content through their algorithms. They profit from polarisation, while doing little to curb hate speech or misinformation.”

Well said, Prateek Sinha, you speak for all of us – as well as for Radhika Yadav, felled down by a monster dad who cannot,alas, defend herself.

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Readers Write In…

Why did Wire forget Dharmasthala?

We received a mail from the ‘Justice for Sowjanya Team’:

“We are writing to you on behalf of citizens and activists who are deeply disturbed by what is happening in Dharmasthala, Karnataka — and how it continues to be ignored by the mainstream narrative. This is not just about a single case. This is about a long-standing pattern of rape, murder, cover-ups, and institutional silence in the name of faith, power, and political protection.

Why This Matters:

• Hundreds of women and girls are suspected to have been raped, murdered, and buried in Dharmasthala forests and lodges.
• The 2012 Soujanya case — involving the brutal gang rape and murder of a 17-year-old girl — was mishandled, and a mentally ill man was falsely accused. The case remains unresolved to this day.
• Veerendra Heggade, head of the Dharmasthala temple and now BJP Rajya Sabha MP, has never been publicly questioned.
• Opposition parties, RSS, VHP, and Hindu karyakartas are all silent — a silence that is alarming.
• Local police, media, and administration are accused of destroying evidence, suppressing FIRs, and threatening activists.

My response:  The Wire recently carried a story on the issue, ‘Dharmasthala Temple Dharmadhikari’s Brother Gets Gag Order to Delete Over 8,800 Links’ (July 22), but I agree that it was remiss in failing to take note of the issue earlier, and in a more comprehensive manner. 

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A call to canonise Stan Swamy

A mail from Jayaram, Bengaluru:

“It is four years since one of India's prominent human rights activists – a defender of Adivasi rights – Father Stan Swamy SJ (Stanislaus Lourduswamy, 26 April 1937-5 July 2021) – was institutionally murdered by the cynical Hinduthva rightwing establishment that jailed him on ludicrous charges.

“Just to remind readers: Four years ago, Professor Mary Lawlor, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders, had said, "I was devastated to hear that Father Stan, a Jesuit priest who had dedicated much of his life to defending the rights of indigenous peoples and the Adivasi minority, died in custody on July 5, despite many requests for his release as his health deteriorated in prison."… 

 “I reiterate my request to members of the Catholic Church in India to revisit this issue. I'm given to understand that a few bishops are pusillanimous Christosanghis: Please urge them to stand up for the teachings of Jesus Christ, to stand with the Constitution of India and with the oppressed. Also begin the long process leading to the canonisation of Father Stan as the Saint who lived amidst us. Proclaim him as the Patron Saint of Human Rights Defenders!”

Write to ombudsperson@thewire.in.

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