Context

• The recent judgment of the Chhattisgarh High Court in a custodial death case exposes troubling fissures in India’s legal approach to police violence and caste oppression.
• While the facts are deeply disturbing, a Dalit man dying in custody after a medical report found no injuries, only for the post-mortem to reveal 26 wounds, the reasoning of the court is perhaps more concerning.
• In downgrading a conviction from murder to culpable homicide, the High Court suggested that the police officers had intended merely to teach a lesson to the victim.
• This phrase, seemingly minor, carries profound implications for the rule of law, constitutional morality, and the protection of vulnerable communities.

Violence Cannot Be Rationalised as Deterrence

• The phrase teaching a lesson signals more than an explanation of intent, it normalises custodial brutality as a form of discipline.
• The Constitution of India envisions the state as an institution bound by procedures, rights, and proportionality, not one that sanctions violence as correction.
• To frame custodial assault as misguided discipline is to blur the line between legal authority and authoritarian force.
• Courts, as guardians of constitutional morality, cannot afford to rationalise state violence under the guise of deterrence.
• Judicial language shapes reasoning, and reasoning shapes practice: when a constitutional court entertains the possibility of violence as correction, it sends a dangerous signal to police officers that excesses may be excusable zeal rather than criminal acts.

The Caste Dimension of Custodial Deaths

• Equally significant is the erasure of caste from the narrative. The victim in this case was a Dalit man, assaulted by upper-caste officers.
• Yet both the trial and appellate courts dismissed the applicability of the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989, on grounds that there was no direct evidence of caste-based motivation.
• This narrow reading ignores how caste power operates in structural, implicit ways.
• To require explicit slurs or overt declarations of caste animus is to deny the lived experience of caste-based violence, particularly in rural policing where Dalits and Adivasis are disproportionately subjected to brutality.
• By setting the bar for proving caste intent unrealistically high, courts risk hollowing out the SC/ST Act and failing the very communities it was designed to protect.

Judicial Precedent and Persistent Impunity

• Custodial violence is not a new or isolated phenomenon.
• The Supreme Court has repeatedly issued guidelines, from the landmark D. K. Basu case onwards, mandating safeguards against torture and abuse in custody.
• Yet deaths in custody remain alarmingly frequent, disproportionately targeting the poor and marginalised.
• Compliance with judicial safeguards remains patchy, and accountability mechanisms are weak, often compromised by the fact that investigations are led by the same institutions implicated in abuse.
• Against this backdrop, the High Court’s language is especially damaging: rather than confronting systemic rot, it risks legitimising it by portraying violence as purposeful, if excessive, discipline.

The Path of Judicial Integrity

• If the judiciary is to act as the bulwark of constitutional democracy, it must reject any narrative that confers moral legitimacy upon custodial violence.
• Police officers are not vigilantes empowered to correct behaviour through force; they are public servants bound by law.
• To endorse the idea of teaching a lesson is to substitute fear for justice and coercion for due process.
• True deterrence arises not from bruises inflicted in the shadows of police stations but from proportionate punishment within the legal system.
• For structural reform, courts must insist that custodial violence is always criminal, never disciplinary.
• The SC/ST Act must be interpreted expansively to capture the systemic and caste-coded nature of violence against Dalits and Adivasis.
• Independent oversight mechanisms must be empowered to investigate custodial abuse, ensuring that accountability does not rest with compromised institutions.
• Most importantly, judicial discourse itself must reflect zero tolerance for the rationalisation of state brutality.

Conclusion

• The Constitution of India is built on the principles of dignity, equality, and rule of law. These values cannot coexist with a legal system that tolerates or rationalises custodial violence under the guise of discipline.
• The High Court’s invocation of teaching a lesson risks undermining decades of constitutional jurisprudence and emboldening future violators.
• What is required is not rhetorical sympathy but structural transformation, stronger enforcement of safeguards, robust application of protective laws, and a judicial voice that affirms that no citizen, least of all the most marginalised, should have their rights trampled in the name of correction.
• To accept anything less is to inch toward authoritarianism, where justice is written not in rights, but in bruises.