Rights not Enforced

The problems of individual rights in India is greater than most of us expect it to be. They are certainly not about five-bob postal orders...

Human trafficking is a $8 million illegal business in India. Around 10,000 Nepali women are brought to India annually for commercial exploitation. Each year 20,000-25,000 women and children are trafficked from Bangladesh. Babubhai Khimabhai Katara was a Member of Parliament when arrested for smuggling a child to Canada. The 1984 Anti-Sikh Riots was a four-day period during which Sikhs were massacred by members of the secular-centrist Congress Party of India; some estimates state that more than 2,000 were killed.

It has been found that more than half of the prisoners of the country are detained without adequate evidence. Unlike in other democratic countries, the investigation in India generally commence with the arrest of the accused. As the judicial system is understaffed and sluggish, it is not uncommon to find innocent civilians languishing in jail for many years. For instance, the Bombay high court in September 2009 asked the Maharashtra government to pay Rs 1 lakh as compensation to a 40-year-old man who languished in prison for over 10 years for a crime he didn’t commit. This is just one example.

Narcoanalysis is a medication used to obtain information from subjects who are unable or unwilling to provide it otherwise. The unethical use is classified as a form of torture according to international law. However, they are productively used in the evaluation of psychotic patients in the practice of psychiatry.

It is now commonly permitted by Indian courts for crime investigation. Even though according to Indian constitution "nobody may be made a witness against himself", courts have recently proclaimed that even a permission from court is not necessary for conducting this practice. Narcoanalysis is now widely used to replace/circumvent the lack of skill and infrastructure for conducting scientific methods of crime investigation. Narcoanalysis is also alleged as against medical ethics.
Despite state prohibitions against torture and custodial misconduct by the police, torture is widespread in police custody, which is a major reason behind deaths in custody.

Although human rights problems do exist in India, the country is generally not regarded as a human rights concern, unlike other countries in South Asia.
Based on these considerations, the report Freedom in the World 2006 by Freedom House gave India a political rights rating of 2, and a civil liberties rating of 3, earning it the designation of free.