Custodial torture: SC raps govt. over CCTV compliance

26 NOVEMBER 2025

The Centre’s lack of response to a judicial direction to install CCTV cameras in the offices of agencies like the CBI, ED, and the NIA to prevent custodial torture prompted the Supreme Court to ask if it was taking the top court “very lightly”.
It has been five years since a Supreme Court judgment made it mandatory for the police and Central probe agencies to fix and maintain CCTV cameras at police stations and offices of Central law enforcement agencies with powers of “interrogation”.
The court was shocked to discover that custodial cruelty had far from faded, with reports of 11 custodial deaths in eight months in Rajasthan.
A Bench of Justices Vikram Nath and Sandeep Mehta chose to suo motu re-examine the level of compliance shown by States, Union Territories, and the Centre to the 2020 judgment of the court by a three-judge Bench headed by Justice Rohinton F. Nariman (now retired), in Paramvir Singh Saini versus Baljit Singh.