Bhopal: “I can't make a deal over my son’s dead body. He was brutally murdered in police custody. I have paid a heavy price seeking justice. I will continue to fight until I’m alive.” 

That was Seema Rais, a 55-year-old Muslim woman, who waited for more than nine years for a criminal case to be registered for her son’s death on 23 June 2015.

Even after a judicial inquiry by a magistrate that lasted 18 months concluded that Mohsin died because he was tortured in police and judicial custody, Rais still had to move a district court here in Madhya Pradesh’s capital, demanding a first information report (FIR) against the alleged murderers. 

Over the next seven years, seven judicial magistrates and judges heard the complaint, which she filed on 20 April 2017.

The magistrate’s conclusion that Mohsin had been tortured was the seventh judgement in the case since 2017.

On 2 August 2024, magistrate Ashish Mishra booked four constables, two inspectors, a jailer and a doctor for murder, criminal conspiracy and destruction of evidence under the Indian Penal Code, 1860, saying there was evidence to show that 22-year-old Mohsin died as a result of the torture he suffered in police and judicial custody after his family failed to pay a bribe of Rs 200,000.

A Magistrate Indicts The Police

In his 11-page order, Mishra wrote, “Mohsin died in a place where it is difficult for a common man to see the offence and submit evidence for the same. Yet, the applicant (Mohsin’s family) had presented 14 witnesses, of which three were private, and the remaining 11 were either police personnel, doctors, or compounders who are government employees.”

“…constable Ehsan, constable Murali, constable Dinesh, constable Chironji, jailer Alok Bajpayee, Dr R N Sahu, sub-inspector D N Yadav and town inspector Manish Raj Bhadoriya are prima facie liable to be booked…” the order said. 

“Since the jail authorities had realised that Mohsin was dead, they tried to shrug off their responsibility by declaring Mohsin as mentally challenged with the help of R N Sahu,” the order said. 

All eight accused were to be present before the court on 25 September 2024.

After Rais moved the Bhopal district court in April 2017, the first magistrate who heard her plea booked them for murder on 5 May 2018. Six more magistrates and judges heard the case because the magistrates were not giving detailed orders, and the accused appealed each order.

According to the union government data presented in Parliament in August  2023, 687 deaths in police custody were reported across the country between 2018-19 and 2022-23. Madhya Pradesh reported 50 deaths in the same period, the third highest after Gujarat and Maharashtra. 

Citing data from the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), the government in February 2022 told Parliament that there were 2,152 deaths in judicial custody and 155 in police custody in 2021-22 until February 28, 2022. Uttar Pradesh accounted for the highest number of cases of deaths in judicial custody (448) in 2021-22, while Maharashtra reported the highest number of deaths in police custody (29) that year.

The Times of India reported that NHRC announced total compensation worth Rs 4.53 crore in 2021-22 in 137 cases of custodial deaths, lower than Rs 4.88 crore of compensation money awarded in 161 cases in 2020-21.

As per NHRC data shared by MHA, there were 1840 judicial deaths across the country in 2020-21, 1584 in 2019-20, 1797 in 2018-19, 1636 in 2017-18 and 1616 in 2016-17, TOI reported. Police custody death cases with NHRC stood at 100 in 2020-21, 112 in 2019-20, 136 in 2018-19, 146 in 2017-18 and 145 in 2016-17

“Police brutality or torture isn't acceptable in any form,” said Shailendra Shrivastava, a retired India Police Service (IPS) officer who served as the inspector general of Bhopal from 2008 to 2011. “Custody means legal protection. It doesn’t mean police can torture undertrials or prisoners.”

Sahu, a physiatrist, has retired and runs a private clinic in Bhopal.

When this story was published,  the four constables, two inspectors, and the jailer were still discharging their duties. They had not been suspended or fired after the court’s verdict. 

‘I Have Paid A Heavy Price’

India celebrated its 78th Independence Day, but Rais, who lives in  Teela Jamalpura, a lower and middle-income locality in Bhopal, home to labourers, factory workers, auto drivers and small business owners, said she did not feel safe or free. 

While sitting on her bed and perusing the footage from the ten CCTV cameras she had installed in her one-story house, Rais said she lived alone, rarely left the house, and was constantly afraid for her safety. 

Rais belonged to a known crime family in the city, with multiple criminal cases registered against her husband, Mohammad Rais and her three sons—Mohsin, the eldest, who died in 2015, Yaseen and Shahid, who was externed from Bhopal in March 2024. 

Rais alleged that the Bhopal municipal corporation had demolished two of their family homes in Teela Jamalpura and Khanugaon without notice in 2019-2020, 

claiming that the houses were illegal constructions. But she could not give the dates of when the houses were destroyed. 

Claiming that mediators came to talk to her on behalf of the police personnel and the physiatrist, Sahu, saying the criminal cases against her family would be taken back if she withdrew her case, Rais said, “I will never surrender to those who killed my innocent son in cold blood, no matter the cost.” 

Hailing from Jhansi in Uttar Pradesh, Rais married Mohammad Rais from MP’s Vidisha district when she was 18. They settled in Bhopal. They had five daughters and three sons. 

After marriage, Mohammed Rais worked as a radio and television mechanic and earned the title ‘Rais Radio’. As his family grew, he started a DJ business, renting bands for marriage ceremonies. His next venture, buying and selling second-hand cars, made him rich. As he brushed up with many criminal groups operating in the city, the thriving businessman became involved in many criminal activities, including assault, robbery, and theft.

Advocate Dinesh Tiwari, who has been the Rais family lawyer for 30 years, said that more than 30 FIRs were registered against Mohammed Rais. He was sentenced under the Narcotic Drug and Psychotropic Substances Act 1985 in 2013-14.

Tiwari said the message that spread among the police circle was if you detain Rais’s sons or book them in trivial cases, the family will pay a heavy bribe. 

“It wasn’t Rais, but it was the police who made his children criminals, framing them in fake cases first to extort money from the family and then to pressure them to withdraw Mohsin’s custodial death case,” said Tiwari. “Not all the cases are framed, especially the cases of assault, but the majority of them are bogus and fall flat in the courts.”    

Yaseen, 26, faced 22 FIRs from 2011 to 2024 for crimes ranging from assault and robbery to drug peddling. His FIRs revealed that the police booked him in 18 FIRs between 2011 and 2016 when he was a minor, but they showed him as an adult in all the police records.  

On 19 August 2024, the Bhopal police released a list of 32 criminals, including Rais’s sons, under section 111 of the Bhartiya Nyay Sahita, a provision for breaking up crime syndicates by imposing longer jail terms, heavy fines, and confiscating properties earned as a result of the crimes. 

“What else do they want?” said Rais. “They have already taken everything.” 

Torture In Police & Judicial Custody 

The Bhopal crime branch detained Mohsin on 4 June 2015 from his home. 

Rais said she didn't know why he was picked up, but when she went to ask for him at the crime branch office, the police demanded a Rs 2 lakh bribe. 

When the family was trying to arrange the bribe, Moshin was handed over to the TT Nagar police station in the city on 7 June 2015, where sub-inspector D.N. Yadav and town inspector Manish Raj Bhadoriya allegedly tortured him, including giving electric shocks, according to her complaint for registering an FIR. 

“They didn’t let us meet Mohsin,” she told Article14. “But we could hear him screaming.” 

When Mohsin’s family couldn’t pay the bribe, Rais said the police booked him for theft and robbery and produced him before the court on 10 June 2015. He was then sent to Bhopal central jail.

On 16 June, Sahu, then a psychiatrist at Bhopal’s government Hamidia Hospital, diagnosed Mohsin's mental condition as unstable and said he should be sent to Gwalior's mental hospital, 400 km north  of Bhopal, according to a report by the police after his death. 

While Mohsin’s family was running pillar to post to learn his whereabouts, a prisoner named Firoz, who was locked up in the same cell as Moshin at the Bhopal central jail, came out on bail and informed them that Mohsin was being tortured and his condition was deteriorating.

His family rushed to the jail to meet him on 22 June. 

Unable To Walk

According to the complaint, two men had to carry him to the gate when the family went to meet him, and he was struggling to speak.

In the brief meeting, Moshin told his family that he was tortured in police custody as well as in judicial custody because the authorities wanted him to admit to a robbery.

Mohsin told them he was given electric shocks in his private parts, forced to urinate on an electric heater, and his nails were pulled in police and judicial custody. 

“Inhe chodna nahi Ammi (don’t let them get away),” were his last words before the jail personnel forcefully took him away, Rais said.

According to the police report on Mohsin’s death, on 23 June, three police constables, Rajesh Choudhary, Kamal Rajput, and Amardeep, took Mohsin to the Gwalior central jail Sahu suggested.

“Mohsin was unable to walk when we arrived at the jail at 6 am,” Choudhary told the court. “When we refused to take a gravely ill Mohsin from Bhopal central jail to Gwalior, the jail authorities forced us to take him on the shoulder.”  

After his medical examination at the Gwalior central jail, a doctor referred him to the city's Jaya Arogya hospital. He was admitted to the intensive care unit, but the doctor declared him dead within an hour.

Chandrashekar Waghmare, the doctor who conducted Mohsin’s postmortem on 25 June 2015, told the court that Mohsin had marks on his wrists and ankles and bruises all over his body. 

Waghmare noted that his death had occurred about 24 to 72 hours earlier and given the decomposed state of the body, it was difficult to ascertain the cause of death.

Judicial Enquiry 

Judicial magistrate Vipendra Singh Yadav conducted the judicial enquiry, which is mandatory in custodial death cases. 

On 4 August 2015, Yadav wrote to Bhopal central jail, demanding CCTV footage of 23 June 2015 between 6 am and 8 am to ascertain Mohsin’s physical condition of Mohsin when he left the jail, according to the judicial report. They said the jail administration only kept the CCTV footage for 30 days. 

After 18 months, Yadav submitted an 11-page report on 6 February 2017, which quoted RN Azad, a doctor at the Bhopal central jail, who said that when Mohsin was brought to the prison from the TT Nagar police station on 10 June 2015, he had multiple bruises on his body, which showed he had been beaten up.

Another witness, identified as Firoz, who was a prisoner at Bhopal Central Jail along with Mohsin, testified that Bajpayee, the jailer, along with other staffers of the jail, had tortured Mohsin.

“Undertail prisoner Mohsin was physically healthy and mentally fit when first arrested. But he was tortured in police and judicial custody not just physically but mentally,” said Yadav. 

“Since the body was decomposed when the autopsy was conducted, the reason for his death couldn’t be ascertained,” said Yadav. “Nonetheless, all the evidence and witnesses confirm that he succumbed to police torture.” 

For Rais, Mohsin’s mother, who had lost all hope for justice in the last two years, the judicial report was like a light at the end of the tunnel. 

But Rais was forced to move the Bhopal district court when no further action was forthcoming, demanding an FIR against four constables, two police officers, one jailer and a doctor.  

The Setback

Hearing Mohsin’s mother’s plea, judicial magistrate Rohit Shrivastava, on 24 May 2018, gave the first verdict of the case in favour of  Rais.

In a two-page order on 24 May 2018, the magistrate booked them for murder, saying,  “Based on the evidence and testimony the applicant has provided, the accused … found guilty under section 302, 120-B and 201 of the IPC and Court take cognisance against it.” 

The accused, however, appealed against the verdict in the court of additional sessions judge Anjali Singh, who rejected the appeal in June 2018, directing the lower court to give a detailed verdict or “speaking order” fixing the roles of all the accused.

The case was referred to judicial magistrate Sneha Singh, who upheld the previous magistrate’s judgement and gave a two-page verdict, which the accused appealed. 

Additional sessions judge Dharmendra Tada rejected the appeal on 16 September 2022 and ordered the judicial magistrate to issue a more detailed verdict or speaking order than the previous one. 

The case went to judicial magistrate Laghuta Markam, who dismissed Rais’s plea to issue a speaking order in July 2023, saying the autopsy report doesn’t specify the reason for death and it was unclear whether his death was accidental or murder. 

Markam said there was no proof that the police “demanded bribes” or that the deceased man was “given electric shocks”.  Furthermore, the magistrate said the accused were government officials who couldn’t be booked without the government's approval under section 197 of the CrPC. 

This was a significant setback for the family. 

‘First Triumph Of Good Over Evil’

Mohsin’s mother appealed.

On 1 June 2024, additional sessions judge Santosh Kaul set aside Markam’s order and directed issuing a speaking order. 

In his 2 August 2024 order of booking the culprits, magistrate Ashish Mishra said, “The benefit of section 197 is given when an offence is committed in the line of duty. But the witnesses and evidence (in this case) nowhere highlight that the act was done while discharging their duty in the public interest.”

“After the first verdict in 2018, it took six years for the court to issue a speaking order fixing the responsibilities of all the accused,” said Yawar Khan, the family’s lawyer, who said he fought the case despite facing multiple threats and immense pressure from the authorities to drop it. 

Khan claimed there were two attempts to frame him in false cases. 

Khan argued that it would be difficult for the accused to get relief in the higher courts because seven out of eight magistrates and judges who had heard the case gave an order in favour of Rais. 

“This is our first triumph of good over evil,” he said.

“Since last week, after the court delivered the verdict, I have been receiving calls from various groups and people to withdraw my support in the case,” said Khan. “Nonetheless, I will stand till the complainant wants to fight.”

“I don’t know how long I will live as these cases have consumed me,” said Rais. “It took nine years to lodge an FIR.” 

There is a long way to justice, but I trust the courts. And justice will prevail one day.”

(Kashif Kakvi is a multimedia journalist who covers Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh.)

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