Bhulabhai Desai Road resident Veena Sippy's only fault was that she often enquired with police about the status of her complaints against her neighbour, a television actor. In April 2008, cops charged her with breach of peace and use of abusive language under the Bombay Police Act and placed her in a lock-up for a night without informing her ailing mother at home. The offences were bailable, which meant police could have immediately released Veena on bail.
To justify the arrest, police told the high court that Veena was abusive and habitually filed complaints. The court, however, chastised the police for flouting rules. "The illegal detention of a woman in Azad Maidan police lock-up in this fashion shocks the conscience of this court. This is a case of not only gross breach of the directions issued by the Supreme Court, but (also) a gross and flagrant violation of the fundamental right of life and liberty," said a division bench headed by Justice Abhay Oka. In March 2012, he asked the state to pay Rs 2.75 lakh in legal costs to Veena.
The verdict has remained the benchmark in illegal detention and wrongful arrest cases since then. Last week, the high court asked the state to pay damages of Rs 15,000 to Bhiwandi resident Kadar Solanki for illegally detaining him in police station for a few hours. Solanki's error was not producing his license at a nakabandi and seeking time from a police officer to travel home and get it. Earlier this week, the state was directed to pay Rs 10,000 to city businessman Rajinder Sethi, whose car was hauled away to police station from his locked premises without an FIR.
In two other cases recently, the division bench of Justice Oka and Justice Sambhaji Shinde indicated that the state will have to provide compensation. One of these pertained to an elderly Aurangabad couple's "illegal" custody for 36 hours by Navghar police. The second related to the arrest of a Matunga woman after sunset in violation of proper procedures.
In an instance, when the state cited difficulty in recovering the compensation amount from the concerned police officer since he had retired, the court retorted: "The state cannot deny responsibility (for police action). It allows such police officers to continue till superannuation, then it has to bear the consequences."
Noted criminal lawyer Niteen Pradhan argued in the elderly couple's case that it boiled down to police not following proper procedures. "If the police had followed proper norms as laid down in the Criminal Procedure Code and by the Supreme Court, the couple could have applied for bail and would have been released," said Pradhan. "Instead, they were in illegal custody, which is a violation of the fundamental right to life and liberty guaranteed under the Constitution."
Times View
Recent cases could be the iceberg's tip
Cops and the state government have come in for some harsh words - and penalties - in the recent past for a rash of cases of police excess. But that does not seem to have changed things. Probably not too many cases reach the judiciary and get redress, which emboldens cops from going on with their ways and scares people from complaining against these excesses. The system, in many ways, still seems rooted in the colonial era and nowhere is it more evident than in the working of the police.
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