What the ‘custody’ of a man from the Pardhi community says about police practices in India

July 14 was supposed to be Deva Pardhi’s wedding day. But hours before the ceremony, the 25-year-old passed away.

Police in Madhya Pradesh’s Guna district, who had arrested Pardhi and his uncle that evening in connection with a theft, claimed that he had died of a heart attack.

According to the police, Pardhi said he was suffering from chest pain and was taken to a local hospital, but since there was no doctor, he was referred to the district hospital. Additional Superintendent of Police Maan Singh Thakur said The Hindu that a doctor treated Pardhi for 45 minutes but he died.

However, Pardhi’s family has said he was tortured in custody. “The police hung them upside down, tied a black cloth over their mouths and started beating them,” a relative told Scroll over the phone. A police investigation has been launched and an autopsy is being conducted.

The Pardhi community to which Deva Pardhi belongs is classified as a Denotified Tribe or a Vimukta Jati. In 1871, the Pardhis were among the tribes designated as “hereditary and habitual criminals” under the colonial-era Criminal Tribes Act. After independence, the Indian government denotified these communities in 1952.

Pardhi’s death was just one in a long line of incidents of violence and brutality against members of the denotified tribes. Despite the new legal classification, these communities continue to face criminalization by a discriminatory criminal justice system.

Legal experts and activists Scroll spoke to said these marginalised groups continue to be targeted by legislation and policing that reflects a colonial vision and lack specialised legal safeguards.

Ongoing criminalization

Contemporary regulations and laws still allow for the prosecution of denotified and nomadic tribes. For example, although the Criminal Tribes Act has been repealed, several states have adopted the Habitual Offenders’ Act of 1952, which requires that anyone convicted multiple times within a certain period of time be registered and monitored.

Similarly, Rule 411 of the Madhya Pradesh Prison Manual states that members of denotified tribes can be categorised as repeat offenders in prison, at the discretion of the state government. The National Human Rights Commission and activists have called for the repeal of the Habitual Offenders’ Act.

Police have claimed that Deva Pardhi has been accused of seven theft cases, The Hindu reported. But as legal experts pointed out, it reflects a broader pattern of these communities being targeted and criminalised.

For example, a Pardhi man from Bilakhedi in Guna district told Scroll that he had been wrongly accused in two theft cases, one in May 2023 in Delhi and the other in March 2024 in Kota in Rajasthan.

“The (Kota) police showed up and said my brother was involved in a robbery,” the man said, adding that he was threatened and told to take his brother to the police. “When I couldn’t do that, they put me in jail.” After serving three months in jail on each of the two cases, he is still attending hearings.

Supreme Court advocate Disha Wadekar said the police were playing a role in branding denotified and nomadic tribes as “repeat offenders”. “What starts with charges for a minor offence of theft ends up in a charge of rape or even murder,” Wadekar said. “Tribesmen are being sent from one police station to another to be charged for a crime they did not commit, where they are tortured to confess.”

Moreover, the police continue to view these communities with suspicion. Deepa Pawar, a nomadic and denotified tribal activist from Mumbai from the Ghisadi community, said that whenever there is a theft in the area, the police turn up to question youth from the community.

Nikita Sonavane, an advocate and co-founder of the Criminal Justice and Police Accountability Project, said members of denotified tribes “are often arrested for what are considered minor offenses, such as theft.” “But these offenses also stem from the criminalization of certain livelihoods and cultures,” she said.

Laws often result in criminalizing the traditional occupations of these communities, such as hunting or possession of mahua liquor, which is mainly prepared and consumed by Adivasi communities.

Wadekar said that if the police cannot find the real perpetrators of a crime, they hire someone from the denotified tribes.

Advocate Nihalsing Rathod, from the Banjara community, said members of the Vimukta communities are being treated and portrayed as “history writers” by arresting them in several cases.

A survey conducted in 2014 and 2015 in some hamlets in Rathod’s home area of ​​Maharashtra found that at least three to four cases are registered against each member of each family, mostly for theft or trespass. This puts them in a vicious circle of litigation costs, sometimes forcing them to commit unethical acts to pay their legal fees.

Sonavane said the extent of criminalisation is clear given how “the Pardhi community has to inform the police before they come together for a wedding”. “Because the idea is that if the Pardhis come together, they do so to commit a crime,” she said.

Torture in custody

In cases of torture in custody leading to death, such as in the case of Deva Pardhi, legal experts said it is difficult to seek justice. Under Section 176(1) of the Code of Criminal Procedure, which has now been replaced by the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, a magistrate is empowered to investigate the cause of death when the reason for death in custody is unclear. This is in addition to the investigation by a police officer.

“The investigation is ordered against the police, it is being handled by the police to implicate the police,” Wadekar said. “If you look at it, there is little recourse for the tribesmen.”

Members of communities who are no longer registered are also experiencing difficulties as the categories they are placed in vary by state and even by district.

For example, out of 52 districts in Madhya Pradesh, the Pardhi community is categorized as a Scheduled Caste in 18 districts, a Scheduled Tribe in 17 districts and under the general category in 14 districts, according to a report by a group called Bhasha Research. Crucially, this keeps the denotified tribes outside the purview of the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989, which could have shielded them from crimes they face on account of their caste identity.

As Tasvir Parmar, an advocate from the Pardhi community, summed it up: “Even after we get educated, even after we become lawyers, we still fear the police.”