Surveying Three Decades of Extrajudicial Deaths in India: Documenting the Declining Rule of Law

This article surveys extra-judicial deaths in India in the past three decades from 1997 till May 2024, on the back of an extensive data collection exercise over a period of two years. It presents a quantitative survey of various categories of extra-judicial deaths with national and state-wide statistics; and demonstrates the crucial gaps in data collection by the state authorities. It finds several internal inconsistencies in such records and concludes a crying need on the state’s part for recording extra-judicial deaths in a coordinated and consistent manner. It also presents a qualitative analysis of voluminous case records of investigations into extra-judicial deaths. These are based on FIR copies; post-mortem reports; magisterial enquiry reports, etc. It assesses the quality of investigations in such cases and concludes glaring non-compliances with the existing legal framework, and the inadequacy of such framework to ensure accountability.