Chhattisgarh Project

Since the establishment of the state of Chhattisgarh the relationship between communities and police is antagonistic and compounded by a lack of dialogue between the two. Human rights abuses committed by the police are all too frequent in India and Chhattisgarh is not an exception. The State is particularly vulnerable to human rights with a relatively less informed indigenous population. A total of 1517 complaints were registered against Chhattisgarh Police in the year 2004 (Crime in India, 2004). There have been alleged cases of custodial deaths over the past couple of years especially in 2004. The victims belonged primarily to the SC/ST classes. It is important to note here that in the year 2004 only two policemen who were convicted of deaths in police custody (of persons not remanded to police custody by court) belonged to Chhattisgarh Police (Table 13.2, Crime in India, 2004).

Through various workshops and consultative meetings with different sets of stakeholders CHRI has found that police commit human rights abuses primarily due to the lack of knowledge of their work related laws and also due to the inappropriate pressures on the police from various groups. Human rights training of the police is practically non-existent and is compounded by the failure of relevant information reaching down to the cutting edge ranks (i.e. SHO, SI, ASI and constables) in the department.

Keeping these factors in mind, CHRI believes that it is essential to lobby for policy-level police reform, while at the same time seeking to improve relationships between police personnel and the communities they serve.