New Delhi, April 4: The Supreme Court has warned cops all over the country that it would not tolerate custodial violence in any form in police stations.

“We give a warning to all policemen in the country that this will not be tolerated. The graphic description of the barbaric conduct of the accused in this case shocks our conscience,” the top court said.

“Policemen must learn how to behave as public servants in a democratic country, and not as oppressors of the people.”

The bench warned erring cops that custodial murders were among the “rarest of rare” crimes that would entail the death sentence.

The court was dealing with an appeal filed by some policemen accused of killing a man accused of petty theft in a police station and brutally raping his wife.

The court dismissed their appeals saying that “if ever there was a case which cried out for death penalty”, it was this one but regretted the fact that the lower court did not even bother to try the accused under Section 302 (murder), IPC.

One cop got three years and was told to pay a fine. All others got ten years.

The policemen wrongfully confined Nandagopal in police custody in Annamalai Nagar police station on suspicion of theft from May 30, 1992, to June 2, 1992, and beat him to death with lathis. They also raped his wife Padmini in front of him.

The cops also confined several other persons who were witnesses and beat them in the police station with lathis, the top court recorded. Both the trial court and the high court found them guilty, after examining some three witnesses including Padmini.

“Padmini has given her evidence in great detail and we see no reason to disbelieve the same. We have read her evidence which discloses the inhuman and savage manner in which the accused, who were police personnel, treated Nandagopal and Padmini,” the bench said.

“We see no reason to disbelieve Padmini’s evidence. Ordinarily no self-respecting woman would come forward in court to falsely make such a humiliating statement against her honour,” it said.

The bench dismissed the accused’s contention that there were some discrepancies in her evidence. “It is well settled that minor discrepancies cannot demolish the veracity of the prosecution case,” Justices Markandey Katju and Gyan Sudha Misra said.

“In our opinion there is no major discrepancy in the prosecution case, which is supported by the evidence of a large number of witnesses, including injured witnesses, apart from the testimony of Padmini who identified the accused in the identification parade held on August 13, 1992 in Central Jail, Cuddalore,” it said.

Her testimony was also backed by medical evidence, the court recorded. Quoting an earlier judgment, it said: “Crimes against women are not ordinary crimes committed in a fit of anger or for property. They are social crimes. They disrupt the entire social fabric, and hence they call for harsh punishment.”

The manner in which Padmini was treated by policemen was shocking and atrocious, and calls for no mercy, it said.

The court also went into the medical records of Nandagopal’s death to express its concern over the “horrible manner” in which he was beaten and killed in police custody.

His body had over ten injuries although the doctors had held that he died of asphyxiation due to hanging.

“We are surprised that the accused were not charged under Section 302 IPC and instead the courts below treated the death of Nandagopal as suicide,” the judges said.

“...They should have been charged under that provision and awarded the death sentence, as murder by policemen in police custody is in our opinion in the category of rarest of rare cases,” the judges said.