Cuttack, May 19: A PIL has been filed in Orissa High Court seeking direction to the director general of police (DGP) to make it mandatory for all police stations to submit report on every case of custodial death and rape immediately to the judicial magistrate in their respective areas.

The PIL contends that there has been alarming number of custodial deaths, but information on them are being suppressed by the authorities resulting in mismatch between reports available with the Orissa police’s Human Rights Protection Cell (HRPC) and the National Human Rights Protection Cell (NHRC).

Bhubaneswar-based Madhusudan Nyaya Pratisthan’s trustee Umakanta Patnaik said information available with the police cell indicated that there had been eleven custodial deaths in Orissa from January 1, 2008 to March 1, 2011. However, the national human rights cell’s report showed custodial deaths at 163 since 2007.

According to the petition, information available with the police cell does not reveal any kind of independent inquiry into cause of the custodial deaths. On the contrary, suicide is the common plea taken by the police. “It appears all the victims of custodial death, belonging to weaker section of the society, lacked the capacity to defend their legal protections,” it contends.

The PIL sought direction for necessary amendment in the Orissa Police Manual by incorporating the provision to enable the accused/suspect in custody to be represented by a lawyer during investigation. The high court has not yet taken up the PIL for hearing.

“The criminal courts, where the accused persons are produced, may be directed to peruse the arrest memo and record their findings in the case record regarding the justification for arrest,” the petition said. “The safeguards for controlling the malady of custodial violence, incident of custodial rape, deat and disappearance in our state are not under check due to indifferent approach of the authorities who take up such incident in a very routine and casual manner and take no effective and time-bound step to bring the perpetrators and offenders of custodial crimes to task,” it said.

The petitioner sought direction to the government to issue a circular “indicating that in case of custodial rape and death, the police chief of the concerned district and officer in-charge of the concerned police station, including the arresting officers, shall be made answerable”. While seeking direction to the Orissa government to pay adequate compensation in each case of custodial death to the family members/legal heirs of the deceased and recover the compensation amount from the salary and other dues of the erring officers.

According to the PIL, at times there are public protests over custodial deaths as probe by the police, which is supposed to be accountable for each case of such deaths in custody, fail to evoke confidence in public mind in general and kith and keen of the deceased in particular.