Police Complaint Authority
In 2006, Supreme Court passed a decision for case "Prakash Singh Vs Union of India" for Central and State governments to implementing its seven directives for Police reforms. The seven directives contained setting up of various authorities/commissions, change in process, and increase in transparency. One of the seven directives contained creation of Police Complaint Authority (PCA).
Click here to download the Supreme Court Judgement for "Prakash Singh Vs Union of India"
In the Judgement, the fifth directives requires that PCA needs to be formed by each state which would investigate the complaints of serious misconduct by the Police. There should be a state level PCA and district level PCAs within each state.
The state level PCA will investiate only complains against the police personnel who are of and above the rank of Superintendent of Police and the complaints would include incidents involving
- Death in police custody
- Grievous hurt in police custody
- Rape or attempt to rape in police custody
The state level PCA will investiate only complains against the police personnel who are below the rank of Superintendent of Police and the complaints would include incidents involving:
- Death in police custody
- Grievous hurt in police custody
- Rape or attempt to rape in police custody
- Extortion
- Land/house grabbing
- Incident involving serious abuse of authority
An victim, witness, or other person can file a complaint in PCA.
Unfortunately, not every state has implemented this directive. As of the time of writing this article, very few states have functioning Police Complain authorities. A person needs to check locally if there is PCA for their state and whether there is any prescribed form for the complaint.
Some of the PCAs have websites as well e.g. PCA of Haryana: http://www.spcahry.nic.in/ where a complaint can be filed online.
The web-site http://www.humanrightsinitiative.org has presented some detailed papers and articles on the current state of the directives and Police reforms.
Police Complaint Authorities Reforms Resisted
Union government compliance with Supreme Court directives on Police reforms