Uttar Pradesh tops human rights violations with 20,000 cases a year

NEW DELHI: Andhra Pradesh and Telangana police may be facing charges of human rights violations after alleged fake encounters recently, but it's UP against whose police maximum complaints are filed with the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC). While Andhra and Telangana face close to 200 complaints against their police every year, for UP it is over 20,000.

Next on the list are Haryana and Delhi which receive 2,000-2,800 complaints a year.

Curiously, police in the Jammu & Kashmir and the North-east, where alleged excesses of armed forces are regularly highlighted, fare much better with the number of complaints in single digits.

However, in most states people with human rights violation complaints against police go to that state's human rights commission. States away from Delhi are likely to have such lower figures as it cumbersome for people to travel all the way to Delhi to lodge a complaint.

Thus it is natural for UP, Delhi and Haryana to be among the top three culprits as far as complaints to NHRC are concerned. However, figures for UP, which almost accounts for over 60% of all NHRC complaints against police in the country, are rather high to be explained solely by geographical reasons.

UP's figures are almost ten times higher than Haryana's, even though both are adjacent to Delhi. "One would also have to take into account the population and size of the police force which is very big in UP," said a UP cadre IPS officer.

Curiously, in the past three years, complaints to NHRC against Jammu and Kashmir police has crossed the 100 mark only once (126 in 2011-12). Among NE states only Assam accounts for more than 100 complaints every year with all other states clocking either single digit figures or just over 10 complaints.

For 2013-14, while Andhra police had 205 complaints against them, Telangana police was at the receiving end in 136 cases. In 2014-15 (up to January 31, 2015) too the states seem to maintain that average with 204 and 117 complaints respectively.