20. Before we close, we would like to impress upon the Government the need to amend the law appropriately so I hat policemen who commit atrocities on persons who are in their custody are not allowed to escape by reason of paucity or absence of evidence. Police Officers alone, and none else, can give evidence as regards the circumstances in which a person in their custody comes to receive injuries while in their custody. Bound by ties of a kind of brotherhood, they often prefer to remain silent in such situations and when they choose to speak, they put their own gloss upon facts and pervert the truth. The result is that persons, on whom atrocities are perpetrated by the police in the sanctum sanctorum of the police station, are left without any evidence to prove who the offenders are. The law as to the burden of proof in such cases may be re-examined by the legislature so that hand-maids of law and order do not use their authority and opportunities for oppressing the innocent citizens who look to them for protection. It is ironical that, in the instant case, a person who complained against a policeman for bribery, was done to death by that policeman, his two companions and his superior officer, the Station House Officer. The vigilant Magistrate, Shri R.C. Nigam, deserves a word of praise for dutifully recording the dying declaration of the victim, which has come to constitute the sheet anchor of the case of the prosecution.
