POLICE ABUSE AND KILLINGS OF STREET CHILDREN IN INDIA
Copyright © November 1996 by Human
Rights Watch.
All rights reserved.
Printed in the United States of America.
ISBN 1-56432-205-X
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number
96-077861
This report was made possible through the invaluable assistance of lawyers, representatives of nongovernmental organizations working with street children in India, and the children who provided their testimony. All of them must remain anonymous out of fear of reprisals by local police.
This report was written by Arvind Ganesan,
a consultant for Human Rights Watch. It is based on research conducted
in February and March 1995 and in December 1995 and January 1996. The report
was edited by Patricia Gossman, senior researcher for Human Rights Watch/Asia;
Lois Whitman, director of the Human Rights Watch Children's Rights Project;
Sidney Jones, executive director of Human Rights Watch/Asia; Dinah PoKempner,
acting general counsel, and Michael McClintock, deputy program director
for Human Rights Watch. Production assistance was provided by Paul Lall,
associate for Human Rights Watch/Asia.
Human Rights Watch uses the definition of "child" in Article One of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child which states: "For the purposes of the present Convention, a child means every human being below the age of eighteen years unless, under the law applicable to the child, majority is attained earlier."
Section 2(h) of India's Juvenile Justice Act (1986) states that a "juvenile" is "a boy who has not attained the age of sixteen years or a girl who has not attained the age of eighteen years."
This report will use the UNICEF definition of street children as cited by Nandana Reddy in Street Children of Bangalore: A Situational Analysis (NOIDA: Government of India, 1992), p. 2:
Street children are those for whom the street (in the widest sense of the word, i.e. unoccupied dwellings, wasteland, etc.) more than their family has become their real home, a situation in which there is no protection, supervision, or direction from responsible adults.
and the three operational categories:
1. Children on the Street
Forming the largest category, these are children who have homes; most return to their families at the end of the day.
2. Children of the Street
These children are a group who have chosen the street as their home and it is there that they seek shelter, livelihood, and companionship. They have occasional contacts with their families.
3. Abandoned Children
These children have severed all ties with their families. They are entirely on their own, not only for material survival but also psychologically.
Frequently Used Terms and Acronyms
A.I.R.: All India Reporter (which publishes the decisions of the Supreme Court)
APCLC: Andhra Pradesh Civil Liberties Committee
CACL: Campaign Against Child Labour
Chouki: A police booth or area within bus terminals or railway stations. It is operated by the police station that has jurisdiction over the particular railway or bus station.
CID: Crime Investigation Department
Coolie: A luggage porter at railway or bus stations.
CrPC: The Code of Criminal Procedure
DIG: Deputy Inspector-General of Police
FIR: The First Information Report, the first report, recorded by police, of a crime.
Goonda: A habitual criminal, usually associated with a criminal gang
Hafta: Protection money
ICCPR: The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights
IEA: Indian Evidence Act
IPC: Indian Penal Code
JJA: The Juvenile Justice Act, 1986
Ladam position: A position in which a child is made to sit with legs outstretched and hands tied behind the back.
Lathi or Danda: A police baton, frequently carried by Indian police. It is approximately one meter in length, two to five centimeters in diameter, and usually made of wood.
Murga or Cock position: A position in which a child is made to sit or squat with the arms under the legs and the hands holding the ears.
NCRB: The National Crime Records Bureau of India
NGO: nongovernmental organization
NHRC: The National Human Rights Commission of India
NPC: The National Police Commission
PUCL: The People's Union for Civil Liberties
RPF: The Railway Protection Force, a central government body authorized to protect railway property. It uses local city police as the enforcement body.
SI: Sub-Inspector of Police
SP: Superintendent of Police
UNCRC: United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child
UNDP: United Nations Development Programme
UNICEF: United Nations Children's Fund
[T]he diabolical recurrence of police torture, result[s] in a terrible scare in the minds of common citizens that their lives and liberty are under a new peril when the guardians of law gore human rights to death. The vulnerability of human rights assumes a traumatic, torturesome poignancy when the violent violation is perpetrated by the police arm of the state whose function is to protect the citizens and not to commit gruesome offences against them.1
India has the largest population of street children in the world.2 At least eighteen million children live or work on the streets of urban India, laboring as porters at bus or railway terminals; as mechanics in informal auto-repair shops; as vendors of food, tea, or handmade articles; as street tailors; or as ragpickers, picking through garbage and selling usable materials to local buyers.3
Indian street children are routinely detained illegally, beaten and tortured and sometimes killed by police. Several factors contribute to this phenomenon: police perceptions of street children, widespread corruption and a culture of police violence, the inadequacy and non-implementation of legal safeguards, and the level of impunity that law enforcement officials enjoy. The police generally view street children as vagrants and criminals. While it is true that street children are sometimes involved in petty theft, drug-trafficking, prostitution and other criminal activities, the police tend to assume that whenever a crime is committed on the street, street children are either involved themselves or know the culprit. Their proximity to a crime is considered reason enough to detain them. This abuse violates both Indian domestic law and international human rights standards.
Street children are also easy targets. They are young, small, poor, ignorant of their rights and often have no family members who will come to their defense. It does not require much time or effort to detain and beat a child to extract a confession, and the children are unlikely to register formal complaints.
Police have financial incentives to resort to violence against children. Many children report that they were beaten on the street because the police wanted their money. The prospect of being sent to a remand home, the police station or jail, coupled with the threat of brutal treatment, creates a level of fear and intimidation that forces children or in some cases, their families, to pay the police or suffer the consequences.
Indian law contributes to the problem. Under the Indian Penal Code, anyone over the age of twelve is considered an adult, and ambiguities in the code concerning the ability of the child to be cognizant of a crime have made it possible for children as young as seven to be treated as adults under the law. There are no provisions in the code that prohibit the detention of juveniles in police stations or jails. The Juvenile Justice Act, which applies to all the states and Union Territories in India except Jammu and Kashmir, does prohibit the detention of "neglected" or "delinquent" juveniles in police lock-ups or jails, but these provisions are routinely ignored by police. Moreover, at the remand stage, the law makes no distinction between neglected and delinquent children, so that a six-year-old orphan on the street and a fifteen-year-old child who has committed murder are likely to be treated the same way under the law, an issue analyzed further below.
Finally, there is the de facto immunity of police from prosecution. The government of India has known about the extent of custodial abuse, including abuse of children, at least since 1979 when the National Police Commission issued a devastating indictment of police behavior. More than a decade and a half later,none of its recommendations have been adopted, and police can detain, torture and extort money from children without much fear of punishment.
This report documents police abuse of Indian street children and deaths of children in police custody. It is based on investigations conducted in India during February and March 1995 and December and January 1995-96. Human Rights Watch spoke with more than one hundred street children, as well as representatives of nongovernmental organizations, social workers, human rights activists, human rights lawyers, and other individuals who work with street children in Bangalore, Bombay, Delhi, and Madras. Of the one hundred children interviewed, sixty complained of police abuse in the form of detentions, beatings, extortion, or verbal abuse. All the children interviewed reported a fear of the police. Of the sixty street children who reported police abuse, Human Rights Watch recorded twenty-two detailed testimonies. These cases were selected because the children had better recollection of the incidents and could provide a comprehensive description of their treatment by police. The testimony of two social workers who had been abused by police for attempting to stop the police from beating children was also recorded; one of these cases involved detention and severe beating. In total, forty-one cases are presented in this report. In addition to this first-hand information, written statements taken by lawyers from children who had been victims of police abuse, documents written by police officials concerning police abuse, case files prepared by India's National Human Rights Commission, press reports, reports by local human rights organization, reports by the United Nations, studies on street children funded by the government of India and the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), and reports by local nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) provided corroborating evidence in the preparation of this report. This report also details the deaths in custody of fifteen children from 1990 to 1994 and the death of one child in a remand home in 1996.
Human Rights Watch was able to interview only boys for this report. Access to girls was limited because most groups working with street children do not work with girls, and because cultural norms make it improper for girls to speak to strangers, especially males.4
RECOMMENDATIONS
To the government of India:
* Implement the recommendations made by the National Police Commission in 1980, specifically those that call for a mandatory judicial inquiry in cases of alleged rape, death, or grievous injury of people in police custody and the establishment of investigative bodies whose members would include civilians as well as police and judicial authorities.
* Implement the Juvenile Justice Act in all states and Union Territories and amend the Juvenile Justice Act to provide for a complaints and prosecution mechanisms for cases of custodial abuse of children. These mechanisms should be constituted along the lines described in the National Police Commission's recommendations for the creation of civilian, judicial, and police complaints bodies for cases of police abuse.
* Implement the recommended amendments to the Code of Criminal Procedure made by the Parliamentary Committee on Home on March 4, 1996. These recommendations include a mandatory judicial inquiry in cases of custodial death or rape and compensation to families of people who have died in custody.
* Amend Sections 53 and 54 of the Code of Criminal Procedure so that medical examination (including age verification) is mandatory at the time of detention, in order to provide a medical record of the condition of the detainee. Subsequent examinations should be carried out at regularly scheduled intervals. This procedure would circumvent attempts by police officers to intimidate detainees not to complain of torture, and would also protect police from frivolous claims of torture because a complete medical record would exist for the duration of the detention. The order for a medical examination would be independent of the detainee and the police. The initial and final examinations should be done by different people to further ensure their validity.
* Amend Section 197, specifically Sections 3, 3A, and 3B of the Code of Criminal Procedure to delete the provision that requires government approval for prosecution of law enforcement officials when complaints of custodial abuse or illegal detention are alleged.
* Amend Section 43 of the Police Act, so that police cannot claim immunity for actions while executing a warrant in cases of illegal detention or custodial abuse.
* Amend the Trade Union Act to allow children to form and participate in trade unions. The Convention on the Rights of the Child, which India has ratified, guarantees children the right of freedom of association.
* Review all laws relating to child labor and the Juvenile Justice Act to ensure that the implementation of these laws does not result in criminalizing children who are forced to work.
* Establish a civilian review board comprised of NGO representatives, judges, and lawyers to monitor police stations. Members of the review boards should be adequately trained and provided access to lock-ups and detention registers.
* Establish a high-level commission to investigate allegations of custodial abuse and killings of children.
* Complaints against law enforcement personnel should be promptly and thoroughly investigated by an independent agency with subpoena power and an adequately trained investigatory staff. This agency should be directly accessible to street children.
* Investigate all complaints of illegal detention, physical abuse, and killings of children by law enforcement officers, and prosecute to the full extent of the law those found responsible.
* Investigate all complaints of extortion and bribes from children, their families, or NGO representatives working with street children and prosecute to the full extent of the law those found responsible.
* Require the registration of each child taken to a police station, including the time, date, and reason for detention. The registers should be subject to frequent mandatory review by a judicial magistrate.
* Enforce payment of compensation for people who have been victims of custodial abuse, as per the Supreme Court decision in Nilabati Behara v.State of Orissa (1993) which ordered compensation in case of custodial death under Article 32 of the Constitution of India.
* Conduct a census of street children through city-wide surveys with the assistance of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). Without an accurate estimate of the population of street children, it is difficult to plan and implement programs for their benefit.
* Promptly submit the report on India's compliance with the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child to the Committee on the Rights of the Child.
* Ratify the United Nations 1984 Convention Against Torture and Other Forms of Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment.
* Invite the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture and Other Forms of Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment and the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention to India to investigate allegations of illegal detention, abuse and deaths of children in police custody.
To the United Nations:
* The United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture and Other Forms of Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment and the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention should visit India and investigate police abuse of street children.
* The United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child should investigate the abuse and killings of street children by police in India.
* The United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child should devote one of its theme days to police violence against street children.
To Nongovernmental Organizations Working With Street Children:
* Maintain detailed records of incidents of violence between police and children in order to monitor and document abuses by police. Submit these records to the National Human Rights Commission on a regular basis.
Child is a man in miniature. The same human tendency exists in every one and an individual with a criminal propensity becomes an anti-social element and a menace to the law-abiding society.5
Police abuse of street children is symptomatic of three problems: the increasing population of street children, the perception of street children as criminals, and the lawlessness of police. In the four cities Human Rights Watch visited, UNICEF estimated that the population of street children totaled 295,000.6 All observers we spoke to agreed that this population was increasing. The rising number of street children is linked to India's burgeoning population growth: eighteen million children are added to the population every year, a rate that will result in India's mid-1993 population of approximately 902 million people doubling to 1.8 billion by about 2043. Rapid urbanization has also contributed to the problem.7 The Indian government's five-year plan for 1992-1997 reported:
There has been a marked acceleration in urbanisation over the past two decades. If the present trends continue, urbanpopulation may account for about one-third of the total population by the turn of the century.8
Urban population statistics for India reflect this observation. According to the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), in 1960, 18 percent of India's population lived in cities. In 1992, this number had risen to 26 percent of the population. The UNDP estimates that by 2000, 29 percent of India's population will be urban-more than 261 million people.9 A major factor that contributes to rapid urbanization is the increased migration from rural areas to India's urban areas. Many of these migrants are landless agricultural laborers whose traditional occupations no longer exist or do not provide sufficient income, and who have come to the cities in search of employment. In Bangalore, many are migrant construction workers who were promised work by agents and subcontractors for construction companies, but who were abandoned by the construction companies and their agents once the work was completed. In general, rural-to-urban migration can be explained by India's policy of development, which has favored urban, industrial development over rural development.10 While this policy did create greater industrialization and less reliance on agriculture as the engine of economic development, it did not alleviate rural poverty.11 According to the UNDP, 49 percent of India's rural population live at or below the poverty line.12 Some of these unemployed or underemployed people are forced to go to cities in search of economic opportunities. Cities provide a slightly better opportunity for these people. However, since the UNDP estimates that 38 percent of India's urban population is at or below the poverty line, this accounts for morethan eighty-nine million people.13 A 1992 UNICEF study of street children in Bombay observed that the
large-scale migration of families from rural to urban areas... has resulted in severe overcrowding, degrading work conditions, homelessness, deprivation of basic services and appalling living conditions in the city. Yet, to return to the village means starvation: to remain in the city means possible survival at least physically.14
Within this population are children, who may become street children when they arrive in the cities. This process was described in a 1992 UNICEF study of street children in Calcutta:
To a great extent the issue of street children is closely associated with the process of fast urbanization that has been taking place in the major cities of India since the sixties... They [the children] come to the city with high expectations and full of hopes that they would easily get jobs there and be able to live comfortably with their families. But except for the fortunate ones the dream is shattered in the case of many. Finding it very hard to make both ends meet they are driven to a life of precarious survival. No place to live, no job to support their family with, they are forced to take to streets as their homes and live on the meagre earnings that they somehow manage by doing various odd jobs. The railway stations and their surroundings, under flyovers [highway overpasses] and overbridges, and in unoccupied spaces they live in large clusters constructing tiny little shanties with bamboo poles and plastic sheets or torn cloths.15
Some of these children have been displaced as a result of development projects, like the Subarnarekha Irrigation Project which began in 1982 with aWorld Bank loan of $127 million.16 The goal of the project was to create irrigation for agriculture, industry, and cities, and hydroelectric power for the states of West Bengal, Orissa, and Bihar through the construction of two dams, two barrages, and seven canals.17 The World Bank estimated that 60,000 people would be displaced by the project, while NGOs estimated that the number of people displaced would be closer to 120,000.18 An example of this project's effect on children in the district of Palamu in Bihar was described by Jose Verghese, an advocate for the Supreme Court of India in 1991:
[T]he project has involved displacement of large numbers of the population away from their means of livelihood. This development project, built with the aim of aiding the development of the area has had the opposite effect, it has impoverished large sectors of the local population and in particular children... Some of these children who have been displaced and whose families were impoverished have found their way on to the streets of New Delhi and other cities, others... have become... bonded labour[ers].19
Co-mingled with the migrant population and contributing to the phenomenon of street children is the local population of urban poor who were born in the cities, the temporary migrant families, children who travel to cities daily for work, and abandoned or orphaned children. All are subjected to the sameeconomic and social problems that the poor throughout India face, including coping with significant increases in the cost of living. According to the World Bank, consumer prices increased 9 percent in 1990, 11.8 percent in 1992, 6.4 percent in 1993, and 10.5 percent in 1994, resulting in a 37.7 percent increase in consumer prices from 1990-1994.20 There has not been a corresponding increase in per capita income; in fact, per capita income has declined, from $340 in 1991 to $300 in 1996, according to UNDP figures.21
As an increasing number of children face severe economic hardship, more and more children become child laborers in whatever occupations are available, including a practice that the Indian government described as, "decadent social practices like scavenging..."22 in the form of ragpicking, and increasingly, criminal activity.
According to NGOs, lawyers, and human rights activists working with street children, juvenile crime has been increasing, largely due to an increasing population of children and worsening economic conditions. The Swedish childrens' aid agency, Rädda Barnen, a member of a coalition of agencies affiliated with Save the Children, wrote in October 1995 that:
Limited data reveals that, in 1991, 29,591 juveniles were apprehended for various crimes. Most of them were charged with theft, burglary and riot. Of those, 20% were children aged between 7 and 12 and 64% were between 12 to 16. Over 60% were from families earning less than Rs.500 [$14.29] a month. Girls formed 27% of juvenile offenders (an uncommonly high percentage). Very little information is available on what happens to these children. Legal representation is rare and there are few facilities existing for the detention of children separately from adults. Little is known about the effectiveness of anyrehabilitation centres that may exist. Again, in India, juvenile crime rates are exploding.23
Very little information is available because very little information formally recorded and what information is available is not reliable. For example, the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) reported that in 1992 there were 1,102 juvenile arrests in India's five largest cities (Bangalore, Bombay, Calcutta, Delhi, Madras). The same year, the United Nations estimated that the population of children in these five cities was 8,919,474, which would mean there was one arrest for every 10,746 children.24 The figures show that juvenile crime was extremely low in these cities, but the figures are questionable. As author Srikanta Ghosh wrote in 1993:
In this country where normal crime statistics contain a large element of concealment and non-registration, it is not possible to present a correct picture of the situation.25
This fact is best illustrated by statistics on juvenile delinquency in Calcutta. The National Crime Records Bureau reported thirteen arrests of juveniles in 1992. In a city that has over ten million inhabitants and over 1.2 million children, including an estimated 100,000 street children, thirteen arrests is a remarkably low number. It is about one arrest for every 94,000 children and even if all of the arrested were street children, it would be one out of every 7,692 street children.
What this indicates is that crime records do not accurately reflect the state of crime in India, and consequently, do not give proper indication of how many people are detained by the police or why people are detained by the police. It also contributes to an environment of impunity, which is discussed in Chapter VII.
While the extent of juvenile crime is unknown, the police perception of street children as criminals is common and is a factor that contributes to police abuses against street children. A 1992 study on street children in Delhi reported:
Five police officials, one at Connaught Place and four at New Delhi railway station, were interviewed to find out their perception of these children and their experiences in dealing with them. The police invariably were quite critical about these children-excepting one officer who was quite sympathetic. According to the three police at the railway station and one at Connaught Place, these children are anti-social elements. They perceive them as thieves, rogues and drug addicts26 who have to be remanded in institutions and disciplined. They feel there might be only 2 to 3% who are "honest" and are at the station and street to earn a living.27
In the case of self-employed children working at railway stations, this perception is reinforced by provisions in the Child Labour (Prohibition and Regulation) Act, 1986 and the Juvenile Justice Act, 1986, which make it a criminal offense for children to be working. This issue is discussed further in Chapter V. Once a child or anyone else is viewed as a criminal by the police, regardless of the validity of the perception, they are treated as such. This attitude was also reported by NGOs working with street children. An NGO representative in Bangalore told Human Rights Watch:
They [police] use street children as a scapegoat for all sorts of things. They are corrupt and cannot arrest the real criminals. Street children are always there, and they are viewed by the police and public as criminals or criminals-in-waiting.28
The view of children as criminals, a culture of policing that includes brutal treatment and other abuses, and an increasing population of street children have led to consistent abuses against children by the police, leading most observers to believe that the police pose the greatest threat to the welfare of street children. An NGO representative in Madras commented:
The most common and pervasive form of abuse street children experience is by the police. They force them to clean the stations, they beat them, they take money from them, and they torture them into confessing to crimes or to name who committed them.29
Another NGO representative with more than twenty-five years of experience with street children in Bombay told Human Rights Watch that the police were "the number one problem" street children face.30
The combination of an increasing population of urban children driven to the streets in order to survive with a brutal police force that views street children as criminals has led to a situation in which detention, torture, and extortion have become the norm, practiced in an environment of almost complete impunity.
A new procedure is being increasingly adopted by the police where a suspect is being picked up and detained for many days. No permission is sought from the court and no information is given to the relatives regarding the whereabouts of the detainee. Even if the detainee dies, the police do not own responsibility as there is no evidence to show that he died in police custody.31
Although prohibited under Indian and international law, the illegal detention of street children is common in every part of India.32 Arbitrary detention is illegal under Articles 21 and 22 of India's constitution. Sections 50, 56, and 57 of the Code of Criminal Procedure mandate that no person can be detained in custody without knowing the grounds for arrest, and that a detainee must be presented before a magistrate within twenty-four hours of arrest. Section 160 of the code prohibits the detention of males under the age of fifteen or females of any age for the purposes of investigation or questioning by the police. Article 9 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and Article 37 of the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child prohibit arbitrary detention. India has ratified both. The United Nations Minimum Rules for the Administration of Juvenile Justice, called the "Beijing Rules" because they were drafted in Beijing, state that all juveniles arrested have the right to counsel, notification of charges and the right to have a parent or guardian present at the time of arrest. Both the "Beijing Rules" and the U.N. Rules for Juveniles Deprived of their Liberty state that the human rights of juveniles should be protected and respected while in custody. Moreover, India's Juvenile Justice Act prohibits the detention of juveniles in either police stations or jails.
Many observers have documented the tendency of police to arrest and detain children without good reason. A 1992 study sponsored by the Indian Ministry of Labour and UNICEF on the plight of street children in Bombay noted:
The most common complaint of street children without families was that they are rounded up and locked up by the police for two or three days merely on suspicion. This, they explained, was done to fill the "quota" which police are expected to do. Younger children are generally not caught; it is the older children the police have their eye on.33
An NGO representative and human rights activist in New Delhi had a similar comment:
For their reports and to make money, the police lock up a few children and majors [adults] everyday, only to release them later after having taken their money and/or beaten them up. A few are also presented to the magistrate to show proof that the police are performing their "duties."34
The case of Anand, a thirteen-year-old ragpicker whom we interviewed on March 14, 1995, was typical.35 He was a pavement dweller who told us he lived with his mother, two brothers, and a sister "near a tree" in Triplicane, Madras. Because of their poverty, Anand had to work and spent much of his time on the street. He usually slept with other street children on the rail platform of Triplicane, a stop for the Madras local train. He earned about twenty rupees a day [$0.57].36 He said he was ragpicking in January 1995 around 2:00 p.m. when two police officers came up to him. They told him they wanted him to pick up some garbage, so he went with them to the Zambazaar Police Station. Anand told Human Rights Watch:
When we were inside the station, the police started to beat me with their lathis (thick bamboo canes) and fists, calling me athief and asking me to tell them where some stolen articles were. I said I had no idea what they were talking about. The beating continued for some twenty or thirty minutes. Then I was put in the cell in the station reserved for criminals and left there for about two hours. At around 4:00 p.m., the police let me go, one of the constables having first grabbed me by the shirt, slapped me, and told me to get out. No charges were filed, and no case was registered. It was the second time I've been detained without justification or explanation by the police.
In some ways, Anand was lucky, because the detention was relatively brief, and he sustained no lasting injuries. Palini was not so fortunate. A thirteen-year-old child from Bangalore, Palini lives and works on the street selling tickets to popular films that he buys up and then sells at inflated prices, a practice known as selling "black" tickets. Sellers of black tickets give the police a cut, according to Palini, but at the end of the month, they do not have any money and so they cannot pay. He said that on September 30, 1995, when he was working near the Movieland Theater, the police came and took him to the Upparpet Police Station in Bangalore. There he was made to take off all his clothes except his underwear. An inspector and two uniformed police officers held his legs while the inspector hit Palini's legs and feet with a lathi. Palini told us:
He kept on asking me if I was selling tickets. There were about eleven other police in uniform and in plainclothes watching while they did this. They were yelling [in the local language, Kannada], "So you think you are a rowdy [a term for a hoodlum], your mother is a prostitute, you are the child of a prostitute!" They beat me for about half an hour. After this, they put me in the lock-up. There were around ten boys and three adults in there with me. They kept me in the cell until Monday. I think they kept me an extra day because my legs were so swollen. Before they presented me to the magistrate, they beat me again, the same way as before. Then they made me walk around and stretch my legs so that they would not look swollen. Then they presented me to the magistrate who fined me 300 rupees [$8.57]. I also had to pay two police officers forty rupees each because they allowed me to go to a shop owner to borrow money to pay the fine.
Palini said new policemen beat ticket sellers and take all of their money. Police who have been around longer take their money and only beat the children if they do not pay up. The going rate is five rupees for every twenty-five rupee ticket. If the tickets cost more or if the film is popular, the police take more. Palini said he pays anywhere from fifty to 400 rupees a day in bribes to the police.
Even though these acts are illegal, in reality, most children do not know that their rights have been violated and are intimidated by police, so they do not complain. NGO representatives and lawyers whom Human Rights Watch spoke to in Bangalore, Bombay, Delhi, and Madras said that even if children wanted to complain, magistrates, specifically in the remand and bail phases of dealing with an accused, do not spend enough time on any one case to provide the accused with a forum for complaint. The magistrate also relies on the First Information Report (FIR) to decide the status of the accused. The FIR is the first description of the alleged crime. Because is written at the discretion of police and has no input from the accused, the police can easily use it to frame false charges. This is illustrated in a 1993 study of Bombay's criminal justice courts:
The usual processing of the remand or first appearance of the accused was that an interpreter rapidly yelled the names of the accused and the police constable on duty seldom allowed the accused to remain before the magistrate for more than a few seconds. Often, they were pulled back even before they heard the next date of appearance. Consequently, they were forced to depend upon the policemen for this vital information. The magistrates, on their part, either briefly looked at the accused or continued with the court files. Most of the accused reported that "they did not get attention from the magistrate. Without making any enquiry or looking at them, remands were extended; the understanding of the accused was that the clerk calls names and accordingly they have to respond. The submission of the police officer was relied upon and as a matter of routine remands were granted mechanically." However, if the accused were produced in the court accompanied by an advocate, remand would not be extended in such a manner.37
This process holds true for both adults and children and was described to Human Rights Watch in interviews with social workers, human rights activists, and lawyers throughout India.
Magistrates also fail to inform children of their rights or to check on the legality of police action. Moreover, magistrates routinely neglect to inform the accused of the charges against them. The Bombay study noted:
After the accused are produced before the magistrate, the magistrate by statute, must inform the accused that they have a right to remain silent, that their testimony can be held against them, and they can have a reasonable amount of time to engage an advocate. Finally, if an accused person cannot afford private counsel, (s)he has a right to court appointed counsel... In the magisterial courts of Bombay, it was observed that in all cases, the magistrates did not apprise the accused of his/her rights. In a majority of cases (95 percent) the accused were not even informed of the charges under which the police had produced them before the court. What is more, in nearly three-fourths (72 percent) of the cases no time was given to hear accused person's point of view.38
The lack of adequate judicial oversight and the magistrate's reliance on the FIR and police accounts have contributed to an environment that allows police to illegally detain, beat, and extort money from street children without fear of scrutiny by the judiciary. Mohan's experience is illustrative in this respect; it was provided, in writing, to Human Rights Watch on December 12, 1995, by a lawyer in Bombay who represented him.
Mohan, who is mentally retarded, was working as a mason in Bombay at the age of fifteen when he was arrested on January 2, 1991 at approximately 10:00 p.m. According to his statement he was walking home after buying cigarettes when a constable named Kadam offered him a ride in an autorickshaw. When Mohan refused, Kadam hit him with his belt and took him to the Trombay Police Station. At the station Mohan was again beaten by Kadam and several other policemen and then accused of allegedly stabbing another person.
The next morning, after being fingerprinted, Mohan was taken to the metropolitan magistrate at Kurla. Although he told the magistrate about his treatment by the police, the magistrate refused to release him and remanded himto judicial custody at the Bombay Central Prison. According to Mohan, the warden beat him every night simply because he was mentally retarded.
Mohan's family was never notified of his incarceration. After one and a half months of searching, they found him at the Bombay Central Prison. After obtaining bail of 550 rupees ($15.71), Mohan was released.
Mohan was arrested again several months later, during the Ganapati festival, because he was part of a crowd in which some boys were fighting. He was detained at the Deonar Police Station for ten days as a result of this incident. He later left to work in Delhi but was arrested on November 3, 1993, because he did not appear in court in relation to the Ganapati arrest. He was eventually acquitted of all charges but only after being imprisoned from November 3, 1993, to March 12, 1994.
THE JUVENILE JUSTICE ACT
The Juvenile Justice Act, 1986, was enacted in an attempt to address the plight of children within the justice system. It was based on the United Nations Standard Minimum Rules for the Administration of Juvenile Justice (the Beijing Rules).39 Generally, this law, like constitutional rights and other legislation intended to protect children's rights, is ignored.
The Juvenile Justice Act prohibits the detention of juveniles in police station or jails for periods longer than twenty-four hours. It also requires the registration of "neglected" and "delinquent juveniles" and requires that juveniles be sent back to their parents or guardians or to a remand home immediately following either their identification as a "neglected juvenile" or their arrest as a "delinquent juvenile." But, the act also makes the police responsible for identifying neglected juveniles and arresting delinquent juveniles. The police actively abuse this authority, resulting in a pattern of arbitrary arrest, detention, extortion, and beatings of street children, and a practice known as the "round-up," in which children are detained in large groups and either sent to remand homes or disciplined in the police station. There are several reasons for the round-up. The act views children working in railway stations as "delinquent juveniles;" such children are frequently victims of the round-up. In other cases, juvenile boards, the authority designated by the act to handle cases of neglected children and send them to the remand homes, pressure the police to fill vacant remand homes. NGO representatives and lawyers that Human Rights Watch spoke to said that becausethe shelters were ostensibly designed to care for both neglected and delinquent juveniles, officials fear that an empty home might invite criticism that the juvenile boards, the courts, and the police were not doing their duty. The round-up is also used as an expedient method of detaining possible suspects. Because police generally view street children as criminals, a round-up is an easy way to catch and interrogate them. The 1992 UNICEF study of street children in Bombay described the practice:
When some property (e.g. a bag) belonging to the public is lost/stolen at the station, these children are rounded up and some even framed. To prove that they are not guilty, the children have to do their best to find the culprit and save their skin.40
Social workers, NGOs, human rights activists, and lawyers throughout India have documented such arbitrary arrests of street children. The following series of incidents that occurred at the Bangalore Railway Station during 1995-96 is illustrative of the pattern:41
On June 29, 1995, forty boys aged between eight and fifteen were taken to the police lock-up by the RPF because government officials had complained about the security risks passengers at the train station faced from street children asking to carry their luggage. They also complained about the station being dirty. Consequently, the boys were beaten with lathis, verbally abused, and then warned not to be seen around the railway station's premises ever again. The police also demanded a payment of twenty-five rupees ($0.71) each as a bribe.
On October 8, 1995, thirty-two boys aged eight to fifteen were apprehended by the RPF for being a nuisance around the station and begging passengers to carry their luggage. The RPF forced them to clean the ten railway platforms, the toilets, and the playground. Then the boys were stripped of all their clothes except underwear and put in the lock-up for three days. After three days, they were sent to remand homes because the juvenile board notified police that the homes were vacant and needed to be occupied.
On February 1, 1996, two foreign tourists were robbed of a camera and $ 2,000 in the bus stand and railway station area. Thirty to forty boys, aged twelveto seventeen, were apprehended, beaten, and kept in the lock-up for four days. They were released after being photographed holding a slate on which their names, crime numbers,42 and the alleged offenses were recorded. The NGO working with street children filed a complaint with the police because the children were unlawfully arrested and offenses were recorded against them without any proof.43
The way the act has been implemented led a Bangalore-based NGO to make this comment:
The Juvenile Justice Act, 1986, introduces itself as one meant "to provide for the care, protection, treatment, development and rehabilitation of neglected or delinquent juveniles and for the adjudication of certain matters relating to, and disposition of, delinquent juveniles." This well-meaning statement, in reality, reads, "Letting a child know in no uncertain terms that he is a criminal, therefore cannot live with his parents but with other little criminals, must work while other children play, is `asking for it' if sexually-molested or raped, is liable to be rounded up fiercely by the police on the slightest murmur of a crime taking place in any locality where he may be, is watched over by people who hate their jobs and couldn't be bothered about probing the child's mind to ensure that he never has to come back there again."44
OBSERVATION, REMAND, SPECIAL, AND JUVENILE HOMES
From police custody, the children may be sent before a juvenile board, or a juvenile court, headed by a magistrate with jurisdiction over juveniles who have been arrested on a criminal charge. Both the court and the juvenile board have the authority to send children to institutions known variously as observation, remand, special, or juvenile homes.45 Thus, regardless of their status as juvenile offenders, abandoned or orphaned children, or children awaiting trial, all children are remanded to the same institutions. This situation was described by the additional commissioner of the Delhi police (ACP), Amod Kanth, who also runs a shelter for street children in Delhi:
Rather than providing custodial care like parents provide, juvenile homes have degenerated into jail-like custodial centres. The JJ Board [Juvenile Justice Board], despite its authority, has remained a mute spectator to the pitiable conditions of the homes. The Juvenile Justice Act strongly advocates that children should not be kept in lock-ups as juvenile justice is distinguished from criminal justice. Most children arrested are non-offenders but the two categories-neglected children and juvenile delinquents are wrongly clubbed together.46
The arbitrary nature of detention in observation homes has been documented in studies on street children. The joint reports on street children by the government of India's Ministry of Labour and UNICEF list some of the reasons children had been sent to remand homes:
In Bangalore, the bulk (81.5 percent) of children were sent to remand homes on charges of theft, the second largest group were sent on "doubt" (11.3 percent). This means that 11.3 percent ofchildren were sent to remand homes without having been informed of the reasons.47
The Bombay study reported that the majority of children (74.6 percent) were sent to remand homes on charges of vagrancy or suspicion. In other words, they were arrested because the police considered them vagrants or suspected they might commit crimes or may have committed a crime. But these children were never formally charged with any offense.48
The Madras study found that 87.2 percent of children were sent to remand homes on "petty cases" or other charges not including drug peddling, loitering, theft, or robbery. The study commented:
This analysis would not be complete without a reference to delinquency. The cross tabulation reveals that 109 boys and only one girl of the total sample of 2,000 had been remanded to a juvenile house of correction, a very small percentage indeed. But out of this small number, the cross tabulation reveals that seven of these children are between the ages of six and ten years. A shocking revelation about our penal system that such small children should be remanded at all!49
The homes function as virtual prisons. Nationally, the capacity of the homes is estimated at 350,000.50 According to lawyers and NGO representatives working with children, the homes are poorly maintained, inadequately staffed, and are not rehabilitative. In addition to the appalling conditions, NGO representatives, lawyers, and children themselves consistently alleged physical abuse and sexual abuse. A lawyer working with children in the remand homes told Human Rights Watch:
The situation in remand homes is just as bad as what happens in the police station. The masters and older boys beat and molest the younger boys, there is rampant bribe taking. The conditions are bad.51
The case of Habib, a twelve-year-old unlicensed porter at the Bangalore Central Railway Station exemplifies the treatment children are subject to in the remand homes. He told Human Rights Watch about an incident that occurred in August 1995. He was walking to a shelter for street children to watch a movie on the shelter's VCR when a group of "crime police" affiliated with the Railway Protection Force (RPF) of the Bangalore Central Railway Station picked him up in a jeep. He was detained as part of a round-up. Habib told us:
They took me to the RPF lock-up where there were around forty other children like me. The police checked all of us for money and took it all. Then they started to beat us with lathis. Two police hit me on my feet, knees, and hands. They called me foul words and insulted me. I was beaten for ten minutes, then they beat others. They were just beating us. After they beat us, they sent all the boys under sixteen to the observation home.52 The older boys were taken to clean the station.
At the observation home, I was stripped and a guard with a crippled hand was there. He told us to call him "Daddy." He made us face a pool of water, then he told us to look at all the pictures of Gandhi, Nehru, etc. on the wall. While we were doing that, he would walk behind us and kick us into the pool of cold water to make us clean. Later he would just make us stand while he kicked us and we could not move. When "Daddy" was tired of beating us he gave the younger boys to the older boys-they get the boys of their choice. The older boys are called monitors and they beat and molest the younger boys. I was in the remand home for about three months and then let go.
The treatment in the observation home Habib described is similar to the treatment Ram reported he experienced in an observation home in Bombay. The account that follows is drawn from his statement, provided by a lawyer representing him whom Human Rights Watch spoke on December 12, 1995, is summarized below:
Ram is from Uttar Pradesh and left home when he was around seven years old. In 1991, he was working as a ragpicker near Kalyan Bus Depot, collecting scrap iron and steel and selling it. He and his associates, Bansilal and Rajesh, both aged twelve years, were caught one morning at around 10:00 a.m. and taken to Kalyan Bus Depot by the police constables. The constables beat them and asked them where they had sold the scrap. After the boys told them, they were taken to the police station where they remained for three hours. They were made to stand with their bodies bent forward while they were repeatedly asked their age. When it was confirmed that they were "juveniles," they were taken to the remand home in Bhiwandi.
At the remand home, Ram was subjected to constant beating for one month. This was done by the older inmates at the instigation of the house master. The house master, in order to elicit total obedience from the new boys, hit them on the slightest provocation. He hit boys with a belt, hockey stick, cricket bat, or any other instrument; if the boy was injured, the master would claim that he had fallen down.
After a month, Ram was elevated to the status of an "older boy" and told to hit the new entrants. Refusal to beat the boys led to torture: the house master would place a weight on the recalcitrant boy's head, make another boy sit on each thigh, and beat the boy with a cane. Seeing other boys go through it, Ram quietly complied with the house master's orders. Boys who had visitors were targets and their gifts were taken away. One night at 2:00 a.m., Ram along with a dozen other boys was called by the house master who hit them, opened the door and told them they could escape. But he warned them that if they were caught, then he would break their bones. None of the boys left.
Ram's case was brought before the juvenile magistrate. After nine months, he was charged with theft, admitted his guilt, and was released with help from an NGO working with street children.
Children in remand homes have died as a result of severe beatings and other forms of torture. On March 6, 1996, fourteen officials, including six caretakers, two welfare officers, three cooks, and a chowkidar (security guard), of the Kasturba Niketan remand home in the Lajpat Nagar area of New Delhi were suspended in connection with the death of an eleven-year old boy, Rohit, who was allegedly beaten to death by an eighteen-year old boy, Dabloo. Rohit had been sentto the remand home after having been arrested for loitering. Apparently he had tried to escape from the home on March 2, 1996 and as punishment, a caretaker had ordered Dabloo to beat him. The Times of India reported that the caretaker, Subash, had been arrested on March 4, 1996 because he had told Dabloo to "teach Rohit a lesson."53
The Statesman, a Calcutta-based national daily, reported that Dabloo had forcibly taken Rohit, rubbed oil on his body, forced him to bathe, and then hung him upside down from a wooden beam on the ceiling. Then Dabloo beat Rohit on his heels, back, and stomach. Later that evening, Dabloo beat Rohit again. On the morning of March 4, Rohit did not respond to calls of other children in the home and when the caretakers found him, he was dead. Children in the home said that despite Rohit's repeated cries for help none of the three caretakers on duty tried to investigate the source of the screams. This allegation was corroborated by the officer-in-charge of the Lajpat Nagar police station, Vijay Singh Chauhan, who said, "Despite being on duty, not one of them [the fourteen remand home personnel] informed a senior official about the thrashing."54
According to the post-mortem report, the body revealed several injury marks which could only have been inflicted over a prolonged period of time. The report also revealed cigarette burns on Rohit's genitals and observed signs of sexual abuse "which casts a shadow on the condition of other children in the Home." 55
The Statesman also reported that:
Residents of the area had also alleged that they would hear frequent screaming from the children's home and were convinced that the children were subjected to torture on more than one occasion.56
On July 30, 1996, fourteen-year-old Hira reported to the Times of India that after he had been found on the streets by police, he had been detained in the Lajpat Nagar Remand Home for five years. Originally from Madhya Pradesh, the boy left home at the age of nine on an "impulse" which led him to Delhi. The police rounded him up on the street and he was sent to the Lajpat Nagar Remand Home. His parents were never notified of his detention and said, "We searched for our first-born for many months after he was missing. We thought he was dead."57
Hira alleged that while in the home, he had been subjected to constant torture by Dabloo, who was arrested for killing Rohit. Hira recounted one incident of being beaten because he forgot to clean a teacher's room:
I was asked to strip down to the waist, made to lie on the floor and my body was oiled. Then I was beaten with a stick until I fell unconscious.58
On May 8, 1996, one hundred juveniles detained in the Rajkiya Kishore Graha juvenile home escaped, claiming that "...food shortage and atrocities had forced them to flee."59 The district magistrate, Ashok Kumar, concurred with these claims:
[T]he inmates were indeed living in sub-human conditions at the juvenile home. Severe beatings and denial of food by the home officials had driven the boys to desperation and forced them to flee.60
The conditions in the home led one boy to say that, "It is better to live a life on the streets than lead a hellish life here."61
There is some statistical evidence of conditions in the remand homes nationally. A number of the joint UNICEF and Ministry of Labour studies which interviewed street children who had been in the homes found that the majority of children reported that their treatment by staff at the homes and the provision of basic necessities in the homes was "bad," as Table 3.1 illustrates:62
Table 3.1
| Conditions In Remand Homes | |||
| City | Total Number of Children Who Had Been Institutionalized | Percent of Children Who Reported Treatment by Staff as "Bad" | Percent of Children Who Reported That the Provision of Basic Necessities was "Bad" |
| Bangalore | 48 | 75.0 (36) | 91.7 (44) |
| Bombay | 126 | 75.4 (95) | 53.2 (67) |
| Madras | 110 | 83.6 (92) | 71.2 (79) |
| TOTAL | 284 | Average:
78.5 (223) |
Average:
66.9 (190) |
On July 28, 1996, the National Human Rights Commission announced that it would begin to investigate the conditions in juvenile homes in several Indian states.63 Unfortunately, this investigation is likely to be subject to the same limitations to which all of the commission's investigations are subject, a problem discussed in detail in Chapter VII.
The criminal justice system in our country should be reviewed for making it more purposeful and effective. The criminal is happy with the court proceedings, with the law of the land, with the punishments imposed by the courts and with the easy life and comforts in the jails and is unhappy only with the police investigation and their preventative measures involving torture and harassment.64
It is therefore reasonable to believe that a certain complacence arising from authority derived from law motivates some policemen to resort to violence against those held in their custody, lawful or otherwise.65
Torture, usually in the form of severe beatings with fists, lathis, or other instruments, and kicking is a common feature of police treatment of street children.66 Beatings themselves are used extensively as a means of investigation, punishment, and retribution. As an NGO representative in Madras told us:
Regardless of the situation the police beat the children. I have seen broken bones, broken teeth, bruises, etc... The older a child is, the more horrible the treatment. They will tie boys down ina spread-eagled position and beat them, use knives or needles, they will hang them up by the arms and beat them brutally.67
The brutality of police in the course of investigating crime, especially in investigations of crimes against property, and as a form of retribution or punishment are acknowledged characteristics of police behavior. A senior state police officer, Inspector-General I. Ravi Arumugam, himself described this behavior in a paper he presented in 1994. An excerpt of his extraordinary statement, including the two charts which he used to describe illegal detention, torture and punishment, follows:
The police short-cut is brutality and it has become a way of life. In a house breaking case, the process of making enquiries from various people, from the Modus Operandi Bureau and from the various fences of stolen property takes time: for the normal police officer it is faster to catch the servant in the house, hammer him and if it works and, at his instance, some stolen property is recovered well and good, otherwise tough luck for the complainant; the case goes undetected. Of course, in India, the most superior short-cut is not to register the burglary at all; harass any one who comes to the police station so that an ordinary citizen would think several times before coming to report an offense. Brutality works even better in handling a law and order situation. And, sadly enough, under pressure it seems to be the natural response of police, regardless of country. Yet the desired change in police behaviour is not an impossible undertaking. The general awakening of society against police brutality is a good sign.68
Inspector Arumugam then provided these charts to illustrate his point:
Table 4.1: This table was presented by Inspector-General Arumugam to illustrate the normal procedure for investigation compared to the "short-cut" investigations which he said occurred in India.
| SHORT CUT INVESTIGATION NORMAL INVESTIGATION | |
| Offence Reported | Offence Reported |
| 1. Visit to spot | 1. Visit to spot |
| 2. People including complainant questioned | 2. People including complainant questioned |
| 3. If available, scientific evidence collected | 3. If available, scientific evidence collected |
| 4. Await result | 4. Await result |
| 5. Suspect(s) identified | 5. Suspect(s) identified |
| 6. Suspect put through Third Degree `Confesses' | 6. Suspects questioned |
| 7. Recovery of property or weapon of offence made at instance of suspect | 7. Alibi statement of suspect is verified by movements |
| 8. Case put up in Court | 8. Traveling to places for verification |
| 9. Questioning people regarding suspect's whereabouts | |
| 10. Case built up | |
| 11. Suspect(s) confronted with evidence collected against him | |
| 12. Pressure of evidence against suspect mounted | |
| 13. If stolen property or weapon of offence made at the instance of suspect | |
| 14. Fences questioned | |
| 15. Suspect confronted | |
| 16. Recovery of property or weapon of offence made at the instance of suspect | |
| 17. Case put up in court | |
| Brutality: 8 Steps | Legality: 17 Steps |
Table 4.2: This table was presented by Inspector-General Arumugam as an example of how the police actually deal with a "Goonda" (A term for a habitual criminal).
ABUSES ASSOCIATED WITH THE INVESTIGATION OF CRIME
During the course of crime investigations, expedience is not the only reason police resort to brutality. Section 25 of the Indian Evidence Act states that confessions made to a police officer while in custody are inadmissible. The provision is intended to prevent police from torturing suspects to gain confessions. But Section 27 of the Indian Evidence Act allows evidence obtained through confessions into court through a back door.69 For example, if a suspected thief is tortured into telling the police the whereabouts of stolen property or other facts not amounting to a confession, the police can then seize the stolen property or investigate the other facts and use this evidence against the accused. The justification of torture to obtain admissible evidence under Section 27 of the Indian Evidence Act is well known and acknowledged by senior police officers, as Inspector General I. Ravi Arumugam observed in his 1994 paper:
In [the] Indian Evidence Act, section 25 says that, "No confession made to a police officer shall be proved as against a person accused of any offence." This clearly shows... how a policeman is regarded in our country. Until this suspicious concept is removed from the law book, the police may harp on getting some evidence for the "hard-nut to crack criminals" under section 27 IEA, they are forced to use violence to extract information in a case.70
However, instead of arguing that torture should be eliminated from investigations or that Section 27 should be amended or removed from the Indian Evidence Act because it leads to torture, Inspector-General Arumugam argues that Section 25 should be eliminated, thereby removing a suspect's only legal protection from torture when evidence is being gathered by police.
The police routinely torture children in order to obtain both evidence and confessions, as the case of Shantanu illustrates.
Shantanu, along with a friend, committed a robbery at a wedding in Bombay on December 31, 1992. Eight days later, on January 8, 1993, two plainclothes police officers, Sheikh Sahab and Arun Hawaldar, came to Shantanu's house at about 10:00 a.m. and took him to the D.N. Nagar Police Station in Bombay.71 The following is the account Shantanu gave of his case:
At the station Shantanu was taken to a "separate enquiry room" where he was asked to put his hands on a table, palms up, and was then beaten with a police baton on the hands. After about an hour, the person who filed the complaint came to the station and identified Shantanu as the robber. Once identified, Shantanu was taken back to the enquiry room where the police hung him from the ceiling and proceeded to beat him for about forty-five minutes with police batons on the shoulders, back, and thighs. Following this, he was forced to lie on a block of ice while his legs were held in place by police. The police hit him whenever he tried to move. Then he was taken outside and made to lie in the sun for two hours while police asked him where the stolen property was kept. When he said that he did not know where the property was, the police beat him.
Two days later, while Shantanu was still in custody, the police brought his parents to the station and threatened to beat his parents if he did not confess to therobbery. He confessed, the stolen property was recovered, and the police released his parents. The police then beat him and told him to confess to any crimes he had committed in the past. He was kept in the police station for ten more days. During that time, Sheikh Sahab would take Shantanu to the beach and ask him to escape so that he could shoot him. Shantanu claimed that Sahab tortured him because Shantanu had once fought with Sahab's brother.
On January 18, 1993, Shantanu was produced before the 10th Metropolitan Magistrates Court at Andheri in Bombay. The police falsely recorded his age as nineteen, even though he was fifteen. The police brought him before the court with his face covered and he could not hear the court proceedings. Shantanu reported that he had been tortured so badly that he could not stand, and two policemen had to hold him up during the proceedings. Despite this, he was remanded to police custody for eight days, during which the police beat him for five days. Then he was sent to the Bombay Central Prison.
The inspector-general of the prison was not convinced that Shantanu was an adult and asked the magistrate to provide age verification. Upon seeing his birth certificate, the inspector-general sent him to an observation home where he was subjected to frequent beatings by the house master. One day before his release, Shantanu struck the house master, which led to his remand being extended by one month.
Upon his release, when Shantanu was presented before the juvenile court, the magistrate asked if he had been mistreated by police. Shantanu stated that he had and as a result Sheikh Sahab was suspended and Shantanu's case was dismissed. Shantanu spent the next twenty days in the hospital as a result of the torture he received in police custody and in the observation home.
Police also torture possible witnesses, accomplices, or people who were near a crime scene into revealing the identity and location of the perpetrator. Although it is illegal under Section 160 of the Code of Criminal Procedure to detain males under the age of fifteen and females of any age who are not suspects, this tactic is extremely common. On January 11, 1995, between 2:00 and 3:00 a.m., six boys, aged twelve to fourteen, who had been sleeping at the Triplicane Railway Platform in Madras were detained by two plainclothes police officers.72 These police officers are known as "crime police"; they are plainclothes officers in charge of investigating theft and robbery.
The boys told Human Rights Watch that the police officers woke the boys up and took them in a jeep to the D-1 Police Station in Triplicane, Madras. Whenthey arrived at the police station, the boys were placed in the station's holding cell or "crime cell." There were three older boys (possibly seventeen or older) in the cell with them. A total of nine people were in the twelve-by-fifteen-foot cell, which had no toilet. Rajiv told us that the police threatened to put him in the "minor jail" (an observation home) if he did not confess. Vikram told us that when he woke up and saw the police with lathis, he feared he was going to be beaten.
After about three hours, at approximately 6:00-6:30 a.m., three plainclothes officers entered the cell and brought a table with them. They forced all nine detainees to place their hands, palms down, on the table and proceeded to beat the boys' hands with lathis. Then they made the boys turn their hands over and proceeded to beat their palms.
The boys told Human Rights Watch that the beatings continued for approximately thirty to forty-five minutes. The police then stopped and told the boys that some auto parts, a gas cooking stove, and 10,000 rupees had been reported stolen from a lawyer's house which was near the Triplicane railway platform. They told the boys to confess or to tell them who committed the theft. According to Vikram, the police said, "Only if we beat you will you tell us the truth. If you do not tell the truth, we will beat you more."
Then the police made four of the boys sit down "ladam" style, a position in which a boy sits on the ground with his hands behind his back and his legs straight out in front. The police then beat the four boys with lathis on their legs, feet, and soles of their feet. The other five boys, who were made to sit in a corner of the cell and watch, were periodically beaten with fists and lathis.
Vikram told Human Rights Watch:
They made me and some others sit down ladam. Then they said: "You better tell the truth in five minutes or we will beat you more." Then they just started to beat my feet and legs with lathis. I kept telling them that I was in a Red Cross program learning horticulture training.73 I kept telling them that I didn't know anything, but they kept on yelling at us and beating us.
Suresh told us:
I told them that I was a ragpicker and didn't do such things. I told them to call the NGO and they [the police] would see that I was telling the truth. But they just kept beating us. Even when we said we didn't know anything, they just beat us.
The beatings continued until approximately 8:30 a.m., when mothers of the boys began to arrive at the police station. Neighbors had apparently told the boys' mothers that they were at the police station. The mothers came individually and were allowed to feed the boys. Vikram asked his mother to contact the NGO he was affiliated with in order to help secure his release.
At about 10:30 a.m., the police told the mothers to leave. The boys told Human Rights Watch that police then proceeded to beat the children with their fists and lathis. They continued to tell them to confess and threatened them with more torture. Rajiv told Human Rights Watch:
When my mom left, they came back in [the cell] and told us to "Tell the truth." They yelled at us and called us filthy things and beat us. One policeman with a bald head and a short lathi screamed and beat us very hard.
Vikram added:
They kept beating us and told us to confess. They called us "fucker" and other filthy things. Another policeman told them, "What is this, you shouldn't hit such small boys." This made them stop, but when he left, they beat us even harder.
According to the boys, this treatment continued until approximately 12:30 p.m. The police then stopped and left the boys in the cell. No case had been registered. At approximately 3:30 p.m., an NGO representative arrived and demanded that the boys be released. He had been informed of the boys' whereabout by some of the boys' mothers. The boys were released at approximately 6:00 p.m. All the boys were fingerprinted, their names and addresses were recorded, and the reason they were taken into custody was recorded. No charges were filed. Vikram told us that it was very difficult to walk because of the pain in his legs, so he and the other boys had to hold each other and walk slowly, but he was "glad to leave the station."
The NGO representative who saw these boys at the police station told Human Rights Watch:
Whatever the police want from the children, you can always guarantee they will beat them. For our boys, they weren't beaten that badly.74
The children said that they were kept in police custody for approximately fifteen to sixteen hours in total, of which they reported that they spent approximately four-and-a-half hours being beaten.
Human Rights Watch was told by several NGO representatives and lawyers that sometimes the police are aware that their methods are illegal and as a result torture children in ways that are less conspicuous. An NGO representative in Bangalore explained:
The types of injuries seen are those associated with severe beatings. The police are careful not to go too far and attract public attention. They won't beat the head or face because then the magistrate might be suspicious, or the public. Some children are chained for days at a time.75
Sanjiv's experience is indicative of this. He was seventeen at the time of this incident. We interviewed a lawyer working on his case on December 12, 1995, who provided us with Sanjiv's statement:
Sanjiv dropped out of school after the fourth grade and was living in Matunga, Bombay with his parents. One of his friends, Yusuf, was involved in thefts and would frequently give stolen items to Sanjiv for safe-keeping until Yusuf claimed them. Sanjiv's parents were not happy with his activities, so Sanjiv slept on the streets, outside his house.
On March 21, 1991, four police officers from the Matunga Police Station had come to his neighborhood inquiring about a theft. Several boys in the area told the police that Sanjiv might be involved in the crime and told them where Sanjiv lived. At approximately 2:30 a.m. on March 22, 1991, Sanjiv and two of his acquaintances, Kanhaiye and Vijay, nineteen and seventeen respectively, weretaken to the Matunga Police Station. The police made Sanjiv lie on his stomach on a bench and tied him down. Then they beat him on his feet and back while the police told him to give them the whereabouts of Yusuf, who was wanted in connection with a theft. Sanjiv refused to reveal Yusuf's whereabouts, but Kanhaiye and Vijay revealed the whereabouts of a hut that contained the stolen property, and the police took Sanjiv there. The police, along with Sanjiv, then went to Yusuf's house in Chembur, Bombay. Yusuf was not there, but his brother was, so the police beat Yusuf's brother and told him to bring Yusuf. His brother promised to send Yusuf to the police the next day.
The next morning, Sanjiv was produced before the metropolitan magistrate at Bhoiwada in the Dadar area of Bombay. The magistrate remanded him to fourteen days of police custody. The first two days, Sanjiv reported that he was not tortured, but following this, the torture began. He was made to stand with his hands tied to two stationary poles while police hit him with a wooden pole all over his body, including his face. Then his legs were tied and placed in a tire and he was beaten on the legs. After the beating, the police made him "exercise his legs" so that there would be no signs of torture.
Sanjiv was implicated in thirteen cases and remanded for two-and-a-half months to police custody, during which he was again badly beaten. He was then sent to Bombay Central Prison where he reported mistreatment at the hands of prison guards and inmates. While in prison, he came in contact with an NGO and now works for the same NGO.
The torture of children as a part of investigating crime is extremely common, as the following cases from Bangalore, Madras and New Delhi illustrate.
Kalasipalyam Police Station - Bangalore, July 7, 1995: Satish, sixteen, and Ayappa, twenty, were taken into custody by the Kalasipalyam Police Station for selling peanuts and cigarettes near a shop. This shop was robbed the next day, and the two boys were taken in for questioning. The boys pleaded that they knew nothing, but reported that the police beat them. After five days, an NGO secured their release. No charges were filed.76
K-3 Police Station, Madras - September 1995: Shiva was sixteen and he had been on the street since 1992. He comes from the outskirts of Madras. He came to the street because he had no father, his mother was a drug-addict, and his twelve-year-old sister became pregnant. He decided to work as a ragpicker to help his sister and earns twenty to thirty rupees a day ($0.57 to $0.86).
He told Human Rights Watch that he was picked up by the police in September 1995 because they wanted information on a friend. He was taken to the K-3 police station and questioned about the whereabouts of his friend. The younger police officer started to beat him with a lathi, yelled at him, and asked him where his friend was. When he said he did not know and that he was an "NGO kid,"77 an older officer said, "Do not beat NGO kids," and the younger officer stopped.
After this they searched his rag-bag. They found plastic scraps, which they said may have been from stolen goods and kept him at the station overnight. They did not beat him any more.
Shiva said this about the police:
Some are very good and they say don't sleep in the road, be careful. Some are very bad and they beat us brutally and take the money from our pockets.78
Vyalikaval Police Station - Bangalore, September 9, 1995: Murugan, aged thirteen, was apprehended by police from the Vyalikaval Police Station on September 9, 1995, at 6:00 a.m. on suspicion of stealing 4,000 rupees from the house where he worked as a car cleaner. The money had been lost one week earlier and the owner's wife had accused him of taking the money. Murugan had been waiting to collect his salary for the past seven months so that he could return home. A constable at the police station informed the NGO representative, who managed to get Murugan released, obtained his back pay for one-and-a-half years and sent him home to his family. Before being released, Murugan was again beaten by the police and given no food for the entire day.79
Railway Protection Force Police Station - New Delhi Central Railway Station, New Delhi, December 1995: Girish was fourteen. He worked as an unlicensed porter at the New Delhi Railway Station. He was taken by the Railway Protection Force (RPF) to the RPF police station in late November-early December 1995. Girish told Human Rights Watch:
I was sleeping in the parking lot when the police came. They asked me who stole 10,000 rupees from a passenger. They said the passenger had left his suitcase at the station. I said I didn't do it. Then they asked me to name who did, but I didn't know anything. They took me to the station and two police started to beat me all over with lathis. They kept on saying, "Name the person," and beating me. I kept on telling them I didn't know anything, but they just beat me. They did this for about an hour and then they let me go. They didn't file any charges.80
OTHER SITUATIONS IN WHICH TORTURE IS USED
The torture of children in the course of investigations was only one situation where children are tortured. In some instances, the police detained and beat children because they claimed it was a method of crime prevention. Mohammed's experience was indicative of this. We interviewed him in Bangalore on January 12, 1996. He told us that when he was a luggage porter at the bus stand, he was picked up by the police in January 1995 and taken to the Upparpet Police Station in Bangalore. Mohammed told Human Rights Watch that he was sitting on a railing at the bus stand with about nine to fourteen other children when eight or nine police officers came and rounded them up; when they asked where the police were taking them, the police beat them with lathis.
They were all taken to Upparpet Police Station where they were forced to move confiscated items, such as weapons and drugs, to a storage room. They were not beaten, and were released when the work was done.
Two days later Mohammed was sleeping at the bus stand. Around midnight he and two others were picked up by about eight uniformed police officers and taken to the police kiosk at the bus station. No reason was given. Mohammed told Human Rights Watch that he was then made to sit, holding his ears with his hands through his legs-the "murga" or cock-position, and thatpolicemen beat him for an hour with lathis on the soles of his feet and knees, saying: "If we don't beat you, you will commit crimes." Afterwards, they released him without charges.
Approximately eight months later, Raju was subjected to similar treatment at the Upparpet Police Station. He was apprehended by the police on August 18, 1995. The NGO representative who helped secure his release wrote this about the incident:
Raju from the Bus Stand was apprehended by Upparpet Police Station for loitering in the area. [He was] kept in [the] lock-up, beaten, and abused in bad language, so as to prevent him from committing any crime. This is the reason given by the police regarding Raju who is a high school student, earning his livelihood by cleaning private buses, vans, and cars.81
"Preventative torture" is one symptom of the overall lawlessness of the police; another is the use of torture and beatings as a form of pre-judicial or extrajudicial punishment. The Andhra Pradesh Civil Liberties Committee , a human rights organization, described this aspect of policing in a 1995 report on custodial deaths in Andhra Pradesh:
The habit of "teaching lessons" on somebody else's behalf by the unlawful use of force is an aspect of a more general habit that the police have cultivated. This is the habit of acting as judge and executioner rather than as merely the police. This attitude has been allowed to develop, and has been implicitly sanctioned and encouraged by the political establishment. Whatever the niceties of the penal jurisprudence developed by civilised thought, in India it is in the police lock-up that the investigation, trial and punishment of crimes takes place. Often, the three take place simultaneously or even in reversed order. The punishment starts before the investigation begins, and it is in the course of dealing out the punishment that the investigation is completed and the judgement delivered, including a possibleverdict of not guilty. And the norm of punishment is preventive and retributive, not reformative.82
This behavior was also acknowledged by a senior police officer who said that, "A strong sense of professional duty and little faith in the judicial system has sometimes led the police to take justice in their own hands and to do away with as many common criminals as possible."83 Police punish children as a means of discipline and as a form of retribution. In general, the tendency of the police is to resort to beatings and torture, and the reasons for the violence are often arbitrary or incidental.
The case of Bhaskar is an example of how little provocation is necessary for the police to retaliate against street children. Bhaskar was selling illegal movie tickets in Bangalore on July 2, 1995. He was beaten by the crime police affiliated with the Upparpet Police Station, apparently to punish him for having previously mocked the police and having run away from them. The NGO representative who helped to secure his release from custody wrote:
Bhaskar, aged fifteen, was badly beaten by the crime police at Upparpet Police Station for making faces at the police on a previous occasion while running away after selling cinema tickets in black [scalping tickets]. He was released the next day with a warning..84
Sharad, a fifteen-year-old ragpicker was caught in the act of stealing milk cartons in January 1995. The police of the V-185, Villevakkam Police Station in Madras, apprehended, beat, and released him. Sharad told us:
I took some milk cartons from a house and the police caught me and took me to the police station. When I got there the police officer started beating me with a lathi all over my body. He kept on saying: "Don't do this again." He never used abusive words. He beat me for ten minutes, then made me sit in the station. I was caught in the morning and they let me go in the evening. When I was there, I saw about five other boys sitting in the cell. The police made them remove all of their clothes, except their underwear, and started to beat them with lathis. I don't know why.86
In the bus terminals and train stations of India's cities, police routinely beat street children as a result of a reported theft or other crimes. A study on street children in Delhi observed:
The other major problem faced by street children is that they are often nabbed by police for crimes they have not committed. For example, a lady passenger's necklace was stolen for which all the boys at the station were rounded up and put in the lock-up for two weeks. They are mercilessly thrashed and sometimes put in lock-ups under charges of vagrancy, gambling or street brawls or sent to remand homes...87
The previous description, published in 1992, accurately describes what happened to fourteen-year-old Ramesh in the Police Chouki at Delhi's Interstate Bus Terminus (ISBT), in June 1995. He has been on the street since 1991 when his father was seriously injured in a bus accident. He left home to work and help support his father and at the time Human Rights Watch interviewed him, earned about ten to twenty rupees a day ($0.26 to $0.57) as an unlicensed porter at the bus station. The Police Chouki is a small station within the station's premises and is under the control of the Kashmiri Gate Police Station. Ramesh told Human Rights Watch:
A stranger came to the ISBT and had his luggage stolen. Around 10:00 in the morning, the police picked me up becauseI am an unlicensed porter and took me to the chouki [police station at the station]. They told me to bend over and grab my hands behind my calves and hold my ears, in the "murga" (cock) position. The police told me to stay in that position until the officer in charge came. I waited, then the officer came and started beating me with a lathi. He made me stay in that position while he beat me. He called me the son of a prostitute, thief, and other things. I had to stay like this for two or three hours while he beat me. After that they told me I could move, but I couldn't stand because of the position I was in.
The police then told him to stay in a corner of the police station. While in the corner, four or five policemen beat and verbally abused him. Ramesh told us that, "Some police are humane and will give you food and let you go to the toilet, but not that day." The police then recorded Ramesh's name and address, then made him sign a blank piece of paper, but Ramesh was not sure what it was. He was released sometime between 6:00 and 7:00 p.m. Ramesh said that he had been detained by the police on at least five occasions and whenever a theft occurs, the police will apprehend children and beat them. Ramesh said:
If they arrest us, we should not be beaten like this. They should be human. We aren't thieves, we are just working to live.88
As the previous cases illustrate, children are routinely beaten by the police for a variety of reasons. Ramesh was one of several children who told Human Rights Watch that they had been subjected to beatings by the police on multiple occasions and for different reasons. The experiences of Manik and Surinder are similar.
Beginning in 1992 at the age of fifteen, Manik was harassed and beaten by police several times. His story was provided by a lawyer working on his case.
Manik has studied up to the eighth standard (eighth grade) and lived with his father, stepmother and younger stepbrother. Manik had friends involved in petty thefts and when he was fifteen years old, he committed a petty theft along with his friends. He was arrested by the watchman of the building, who was a witness, and taken to Kherwadi Police Station. There Manik was stripped of his clothes, a rod was passed through his armpits and he was beaten by a wooden bat on his hand and on his head. The beatings continued from 7:00 a.m. until 6:00p.m. He was not given anything to eat. After he confessed to the offense, he was then taken to the observation home at Umerkhadi where he underwent a medical check up and was treated for the bruises on his back. He was then taken to Nagpada Police Hospital for age verification. After he was produced before the juvenile court magistrate, his father furnished bail and Manik was released.
Although Manik severed his relations with his friends, the police often arrested him because they suspected him of criminal activity. The police on three occasions registered false cases of theft against him and later released him. On some occasions, they would arrest Manik while he was asleep at night and beat him up.
In December 1992, Manik and a friend, Bhanwar Singh, were stopped in their car by police from the Azad Maidan Police Station at about 1:00 a.m. When Bhanwar Singh was unable to produce a license and car papers, they were taken to the Azad Maiden Police Station. The police forced Manik to lie on a bench and beat him until they broke his leg. He was repeatedly questioned on his involvement in the theft of the car. His legs were swollen and he could not stand. He was produced before the Metropolitan Magistrates Court at Esplanade next day. The police threatened to break his other leg if he told the magistrate how his leg had been broken. When Magistrate J. Basu asked him why he could not stand, Manik first lied, saying he had fallen. But when the magistrate repeated the question, Manik told the truth and asked to be given judicial custody. The magistrate asked him if he wanted to prosecute the police. Manik declined. He was then remanded to judicial custody for one day and directed to be sent to the hospital for medical treatment.
He was taken to Bombay Central Prison, which was overcrowded with prisoners arrested during an outbreak of communal violence that had occurred at that time. Two days later he was taken to the hospital and given an injection, but the pain did not ease. On the orders of the magistrate, he was given a medical examination, but although he told the doctor what had happened to him, and despite the fact that he could not even walk, the doctor reported him to be fit.
Manik was named as the main accused in the case. He was initially remanded to fourteen days custody, then further remanded to an additional fourteen days, and was then granted bail. Although he claimed he had been falsely implicated, on the advice of the magistrate he pleaded guilty and was released on probation in January 1993. A social worker who had been sent by the magistrate visited Manik at home and got him a job as a lawyer's clerk.
Two months after Manik's release, policemen from Azad Maidan Police Station came to his house at 2:30 p.m. and took him to Azad Maidan Police Station in their jeep, allegedly for work. In the jeep, they threatened Manik that theywould get even with him. He was taken to the lock-up and his hands and feet were tied. The inspector who examined Manik's record saw a letter to the police station written by the social worker asking for Manik not to be arrested. The inspector questioned Manik about the social worker's organization. Manik showed him the identity card he had received from the NGO. After the questioning, Manik was untied and in the morning he was released. He immediately contacted the social worker who went to the police station and was informed that Manik had been called in for a routine inquiry. At the time Human Rights Watch reviewed his case, Manik was training with the NGO.89
Surinder was fifteen when we met him. He dropped out of school after the fifth standard (fifth grade) and came to Delhi from Bihar in 1994 to find work. He worked as an unlicensed porter at the Interstate Bus Terminus and earns between thirty and fifty rupees ($0.86-$1.43) per day. We interviewed him at the bus station on January 1, 1996, when he recounted three incidents involving the police from the Police Chowki there.
In August 1995, he was carrying the luggage of a passenger. When he asked for ten rupees ($0.29) as payment, the passenger refused and would only give him five rupees. They began to argue and push each other, so the passenger called the police. Two police officers started to beat Surinder and took him to the police station. There, they beat him with lathis on his hands and arms while they accused him of being a thief. He reported that other police watched this, but nobody intervened on his behalf. After the beating ended, the police told him to leave the bus station and released him.
On December 29, 1995, as he was watching a card game at the bus station, two police officers started to beat the card players and spectators with lathis and accused them of gambling. The police took Surinder to the police lock-up, which held two other detainees. Surinder told Human Rights Watch:
There were three police in the station and they told us, "If you do not pay money, we will chargesheet you and send you to jail." We only had one hundred rupees [$2.86] between us, but we gave it to them. They didn't think this was enough so they started to beat us with lathis. Then I guess they realized this was all we had so they took the money and let us go without filing charges. Some police will take money and release you, some police will take money and keep you in the lock-up or send you to jail. The police are very, very bad.
Two days later, on December 31, 1995, as Surinder was again watching a card game, a policeman came and beat him on the arms and hands and with a lathi and told him to go away and to stop watching people gamble.
In reality cynicism protects a policeman from any feeling of revulsion against either corruption or brutality. He starts ensuring that he would not be cheated out of the prize.90
Corruption, in the form of extortion, reinforces the use of custodial violence. With street children, extortion by police is an integral part of the processes that perpetuate illegal detention and custodial violence. The police prey on street children for money.
When children are arrested, they or their guardians are asked to pay money in order to get them released. This is true whether the charges are fabricated or real. The police threaten the families and children by telling them that their children will be beaten, kept in custody, or sent to jail if they do not pay. In one case reported to Human Rights Watch, the police told children and their families that failure to pay would lead to the deaths of their children.
In detention, it is standard operating procedure for the police to take whatever money is in the child's possession.
Children working on the street as ragpickers, porters, shop vendors, or shoe shiners have all reported the payment of hafta (protection or kickback money) to the police. Failure or inability to pay usually results in a child's being beaten, detained, or arrested by police. In some cases, payment is no guarantee against further extortion.
The link between torture and corruption has been described by former deputy inspector, and former director of the National Police Commission, Shailendra Mishra:
With a policeman, the reputation for expert brutality fetches more money than actual brutality, but, of course, the reputation has to have a solid foundation. Once a policeman acquires a reputation for expert third degree he makes enormous quantities of money in daily crime work by simply withholding customary brutality.91
As with the case of torture in general, extortion and brutality are not limited to the investigation of crimes, but certain types of investigation, specifically crimes against property, are notorious for their promotion of corruption, as the Andhra Pradesh Civil Liberties Committee noted:
Investigating theft cases is a lucrative business for the police. The one who has lost property will pay, the one into whose hands the stolen property has passed will pay, and even the one who is falsely accused of stealing or receiving stolen property will pay, provided that all the violence that the police are capable of is brought to bear on the matter. And that is why theft charges turn up so frequently in the list of custodial killings. We emphasize this point because in all the discussion that usually takes place on the causes and reasons for custodial violence, the factor of corruption is downplayed, though it is a very important factor. The police routinely extort money from people they lock up, not only on theft charges but any charge or even no charge at all.92
The amount of money paid to police largely depends on the child's (or his family's) ability to pay and the discretion of police. In Madras, Delhi, and Bangalore, social workers and children told Human Rights Watch that unlicensed porters have to pay approximately 50 percent of their earnings to the police as a form of protection money. A social worker in Bangalore stated that policemen extort amounts ranging from fifty to eight thousand rupees ($1.43 to $229) from a detainee or their family. According to the People's Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL) report on the death of Satish Kumar, the thirteen-year-old boy who died after being held in police custody, the police asked parents of one detainee to pay a bribe of 20,000 rupees ($571). The range Human Rights Watch encountered was from ten to 2,500 rupees ($0.29 to $71). A 1993 study on the justice system in Bombay found that the average non-legal expenditure incurred at a police station
was 557 rupees ($15.90), with a minimum payment of ten rupees ($0.29) and a maximum payment of five thousand rupees ($143).93
The fact that police extort money from street children is well known. In the Third Report of the National Police Commission, published in 1980, the commission reported several situations where extortion by police is common, including:
* Extorting money by threatening persons, particularly the ill-informed and weaker sections of society, with conduct of searches, arrests and prosecution in court on some charge or the other.
* Fabricating false evidence during investigation of cases and implicating innocent persons or leaving out the guilty persons on mala fide considerations.
* Extortion of periodic payments as hafta from shopkeepers, platform vendors, brothel keepers, promoters of gambling dens, and others.94
ABUSES AND EXTORTION
ASSOCIATED WITH INVESTIGATION OF CRIME
Every child Human Rights Watch interviewed who alleged extortion while in custody in conjunction with a crime investigation had been detained on charges of theft or suspicion of theft, as the following cases illustrate.
Firos is a seventeen-year-old ragpicker who lives near the Valluvar Kottam in Nungambakkam, Madras.95 In an interview with Human Rights Watch he said that he earned about thirty rupees a day ($0.86). He had a brother and an uncle, but because they live in a hut in a slum, he spent most of his time on the street. At the time of our interview, he was taking part in a non-formal education program run by an NGO two hours a day.96
Firos told Human Rights Watch that on Sunday, February 5, 1995, he was near the Valluvar Kottam when a woman and three men accused him of stealing some auto parts and a sari. He told Human Rights Watch:
I said I didn't do these things. They told me to come to their house and talk, but I was afraid that they would beat me if I went to their house. I told them to come to the NGO and we could talk there, but they wouldn't come. They started to beat me on the street. Even the woman beat me. They took me to the [Nungambakkam] police station and the woman told the police that I had stolen these things and that I should be put in jail.
The police took Firos and his four accusers left. Two uniformed police officers took him to a fifteen by fifteen foot storage room within the police station, adjacent to the jail cell. Firos describ