In a major decision, the Madras High Court has awarded a compensation of ₹30.09 lakh to the wife and four minor children of an industrial painter who died due to custodial torture by the police and held that the income multiplier method adopted for determining compensation in motor accident claims cases can be followed in cases of extra judicial execution too.
Justices S. Manikumar and Subramonium Prasad said: “When the State cannot claim sovereign immunity in the matter of custodial death or violence and deny payment of compensation under public law remedy, application of the method in compensating accident victims can be safely applied in cases of custodial violence and death too.”
The government had argued that compensation should not be ordered to the family of the deceased even before completion of trial of a case booked against the police for the alleged offence and that the quantum should not exceed ₹5 lakh even if the court was inclined to order compensation. However, the judges rejected both the contentions.
Just compensation
Impressing upon the need for the court to grant “just compensation” to a family which had lost its breadwinner who was just 36-years-old at the time of his death due to the extra judicial act of the police, the judges said, the compensation should necessarily be paid by computing his income at least as per Minimum Wages Act of 1948.
After considering the that wife of the deceased was only 28 years when he died, and his children aged nine, six, four and three years in 2015 had lost the love and affection of their father at a very young age, the judges directed the State government to pay ₹30.09 lakh with interest at the rate of 6% per annum.
The orders were passed on a public interest litigation petition filed by S. Vijayashankar, co-convenor of Campaign for Custodial Justice and Abolition of Torture, through his counsel P. Uma in 2017. The petitioner himself had sought a compensation of only ₹20 lakh for the family which was suffering in penury after the death of E. Subramaniam of Neyveli.
The Division Bench held that the family members of the deceased need not be driven to the civil court seeking compensation for the death when the public law remedy itself could be invoked by the High Court by exercising its powers under Article 226 (writ jurisdiction) of the Constitution to award a just and fair compensation.
Kept in illegal custody
According to the petitioner, the victim had been picked up from his residence at 1 p.m. on May 28, 2015 by the police, headed by Raja, who was the then Inspector of Neyveli Town Police Station. He was thereafter kept in illegal custody for a week and beaten black and blue on suspicion of having been involved in a murder for gain.
After the police released him on finding him to be innocent, he was admitted to a government hospital for treatmenton June 4, 2015 and there he narrated the brutal torture meted out to him.
The policemen had pulled out the nails on his toes on the right foot. He was also tied upside down on a tree and two policemen sat on a log tied to his shoulder.
Though he had no history of renal disease, the custodial torture had led to Rhabdomyolysis, a serious condition caused by muscle injury, leading to kidney failure, from which he died on June 6, 2015.