Lawyer to assist court in Tihar custody death case

NEW DELHI - The Delhi High Court Monday appointed a lawyer to assist it in an alleged custodial death case in Tihar jail.

A division bench of Acting Chief Justice Madan B. Lokur and Justice Mukta Gupta after seeing the inquest report of Sunder, who died after he was brutally beaten up, appointed advocate Rajesh Mahajan as amicus curiae in the case.

The inquest report submitted in the court said that the inmate did not die a natural death.

“He was beaten up with a blunt object,” the report by a metropolitan magistrate stated.

The report also pointed towards the involvement of two other inmates and two jail officials in beating up the inmate to death Feb 2.

The court will now hear the case May 17.

At the last hearing, the court had summoned the Tihar jail superintendent to explain how and why the closed circuit television (CCTV) footage has been erased in an alleged custody death case.

“A man cannot be killed like this in jail…and the authorities have failed to preserve the CCTV footage,” the bench said.

A first information report (FIR) in the case was registered with Hari Nagar police station after the high court’s intervention.

The bench had converted a letter sent by the law ministry, based on a complaint from deceased’s brother Madan Kishore, into a public interest litigation and taken action on its own initiative.

Madan Kishore, also serving a life imprisonment, said that the family of the deceased was informed about his death Feb 13 but the incident happened Feb 2. Sunder succumbed to his injuries a week after the incident.

He claimed that Sunder was beaten up badly by two inmates with iron rods in the presence of two jail officials.