New Delhi (Neha): On Thursday, the Supreme Court took suo motu cognizance of a news report on the lack of CCTV cameras in police stations and accepted it as a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) and started hearing. During this, the bench of Justice Vikram Nath and Justice Sandeep Mehta, looking at the newspaper report on custodial deaths, said that in the last seven-eight months in 2025, 11 people have died in police custody in Rajasthan alone. Whereas, five years ago, the Supreme Court has given a historic decision to solve this problem.
The Supreme Court itself has started hearing on the PIL in this case, according to which, in Rajasthan, ’11 deaths have occurred in police custody in the seven-eight months of 2025. Seven deaths have occurred in Udaipur division. In August, two bullion traders died in Kankroli police station of Rajsamand district and Rishabhdev police station of Udaipur district. Information was sought through RTI in these cases.
The case in the Supreme Court comes after its landmark 2020 verdict, which ordered the installation of CCTV cameras equipped with night vision devices and audio recording capability in all police stations across the country to prevent such incidents. Under this decision, all the states and union territories were asked to install CCTVs in all important places, such as lock-ups and interrogation rooms and other important places in the police stations. In its landmark verdict, the Supreme Court also said that the footage of these cameras will be preserved for at least 18 months and made available for investigation of cases of custodial deaths or torture.
In that decision, the Supreme Court had also directed the Central Government to install CCTV cameras in the offices of agencies like CBI, NIA, ED, NCB, DRI and SFIO, where the accused are interrogated. In that decision, it was said that if the accused are tortured or die in custody, then their relatives can demand CCTV footage through human rights courts, so that responsibility can be fixed.
The truth is that despite such strict instructions from the Supreme Court, the rules are not being followed properly. Whenever the issue of custodial violence is raised, the officials give arguments like the camera not working or the footage is missing. Now the way the Supreme Court has taken cognizance of this matter on its own and has started hearing by filing a PIL, it is clear that the Supreme Court will get to the bottom of this negligence. The court has asked the states to tell their action plan regarding this. The states will have to tell how they will remove this deficiency. Because, the court says that the shortcomings in this matter should be removed without delay.
