The National Human Rights Commission on Friday said that Uttar Pradesh had the highest number of deaths in judicial and police custody between October 2015 and September this year. There were 401 deaths in judicial custody and 27 in policy custody in this period, NHRC Chairperson Justice HL Dattu said in a statement on the commission's 23rd Foundation Day.

The human rights watchdog lodged as many as 32,498 complaints against the police in the October 2015-September 2016 period, of which 206 were cases of encounter. Chhattisgarh topped the list with 66 cases of police encounters, followed by Assam with 43, Jharkhand with 15, Odisha with 19, Maharashtra and Meghalaya with seven each, and Uttar Pradesh and Manipur with five each.

As many as 1,05,664 cases were registered on the basis of information from police and prison authorities, the commission said in the statement, adding that it had sent an independent report to the United Nations Human Rights Council for the third Universal Periodic Review.

"The NHRC has come a long way by addressing several issues of human rights violations as well as giving inputs on key legislations impacting human rights," Dattu said. He also praised the media for helping it build awareness about human rights and the commission's role. "Media reports have been the basis of several suo motu cognizance that the commission took about the violations of human rights...which may not have come to our notice otherwise," he added.

The panel has the authority to question governments if allegations of negligence that threaten human rights emerge. For example: The commission issued a notice to the Odisha government on Wednesday in connection with the fire at Bhubaneshwar's SUM Hospital that killed 24 people and 100 others. "The onus is on the states and Centre to ensure that the faith of the people in the NHRC is not shaken even by exception, when some of them choose to ignore its recommendations...," Dattu said.