NEW DELHI: In a landmark verdict to prevent custodial torture, the Supreme Court on Friday directed the Centre and state governments to put police stations and interrogation rooms under surveillance of CCTV cameras.

A bench of Justices T S Thakur and R Banumathi also directed that the governments must appoint at least two women police constables in every police station.

It also expressed concern that Delhi, Arunachal Pradesh, Mizoram, Meghalaya, Tripura and Nagaland have so far not set up state human rights commission and directed them to form the panel as soon as possible. The bench also asked other states to fill up vacancies in their human rights panel within three months.

The bench passed the order on the basis of recommendations made by senior advocate Abhishek Manu Singvi and advocates Amit Bhandari and P K Mullick who assisted the court in the matter.

The apex court also accepted their recommendation for regular and random inspection of police stations to ascertain whether any custodial violence took taking place after talking to inmates and examining CCTV footage.

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The court has been monitoring the case pertaining to custodial violence since 1986 on a Public Interest Litigation filed by a former judge of Calcutta High Court Justice D K Basu and it has passed a slew of directions from time to time. It had laid down some specific requirements to be followed by police for arrest, detention and interrogation of any person to obviate the possibility of torture in custody.

The court had held that the police officer carrying out the arrest shall prepare a memo at the time of arrest and it will have to attested by at least one witness. It had also ruled that a person arrested or detained shall be entitled to have one friend or relative or other person known to him being informed, as soon as possible.