The National Human Rights Commission has directed the Uttar Pradesh government to pay compensation of Rs 10 lakh to the family of a man who died in March 2021 after allegedly having been tortured in police custody, The Indian Express reported on Friday.

The commission pulled up the Uttar Pradesh Police for “deliberately concealing facts” and failing to explain the multiple injuries found on the body of the 36-year-old man, Ziauddin, from Ambedkar Nagar, the newspaper reported.

It observed that there was “no doubt” that the man had been brought by the police to the police station.

The post-mortem examination recorded eight injury marks, but “the report is silent as to how and when the deceased would have sustained” the injuries, The Indian Express quoted the order as saying.

There was also “no justification about the nature of injuries while he was in custody of the police,” it added.

The order came after the commission dismissed the state government’s reply to a show-cause notice and upheld its earlier finding that Ziauddin had died in police custody.

The commission said that in the absence of any material before the panel, it could not conclude “that the death of the deceased did not occur while in the police custody”, the newspaper reported.

The case

Ziauddin was picked up on March 25, 2021, by a police team led by Sub-Inspector Devendra Pal while he was on his way to a relative’s home, The Indian Express quoted the complaint filed by his brother Shahadbuddin as saying.

The family was told of his death a few hours later. Shahabuddin alleged that no medical examination or post-mortem was initially conducted, the newspaper reported.

The police later claimed that Ziauddin had been picked up for interrogation based on call records linking him to a person accused in an attempt-to-murder case.

They said that his health deteriorated on the way to the police station and he was shifted to hospital where he died at 1.45 am on March 26, 2021.

The post-mortem report showed abrasions and contusions at eight places on his arms, legs and buttocks, and listed the cause of death as “hypoxia and shock due to antemortem lung injury with multiple blunt injuries”.

A first information report was filed under sections of the Indian Penal Code pertaining to murder, and kidnapping or abducting someone with the intent to murder them, against Pal and a constable.

In May 2022, the police submitted a final report claiming there was no evidence of custodial torture and that Ziauddin was “not in police custody” at the time of his death.