When the apex court included setting up PCAs as one of seven directives on police reforms in its 2006 judgement (Prakash Singh vs Union of India), the hope was for PCAs to emerge as a locally accessible remedy against police wrongdoings, identify patterns of misconduct and work with the state police departments to challenge police impunity.

Seventeen years on, PCAs' reach and impact remain limited.

A national assessment conducted by the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative (CHRI) reveals that only 11 states/UTs have operational PCAs as of date. These are: Assam, Delhi, Goa, Gujarat, Haryana, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Kerala, Maharashtra, Tripura and Uttarakhand. The remaining states have either only recently appointed Authorities that are yet to become fully operational, or have long-running vacancies that render the existing Authorities non-functional, or worse, have simply ignored the Court’s directive and failed to establish PCAs in the first place.

CHRI has been monitoring the states’ compliance with PCAs since 2008. This is the first time that the organization has looked at complaints data across all PCAs currently functional.

To an extent, PCAs have become a forum people feel comfortable approaching. This is evident both from the sheer volume as well as the nature of complaints they are receiving. As per CHRI’s report that examined complaints data of PCAs between 2018 and March 2023, Delhi PCA reportedly dealt with over 2,000 complaints per year since 2020, the highest among all PCAs. Maharashtra and Kerala come a distant second with an average of 600-700 complaints per year from 2018 and 2022. Disaggregated data also shows that complaints come from across districts and not just select pockets, within states. It is worth noting that the volume of complaints remained broadly the same even during the pandemic years in several states.

This is telling of the demand on the ground for an independent police accountability body and makes the need for district-level PCAs more compelling.

In terms of the nature of complaints, the “any other” category typically constitutes the largest share as it includes allegations that fall beyond the definition of serious misconduct provided by the Court and stipulated in respective state police legislations. In Assam, one of the few states to provide this data, 84% of complaints (1,118 out of 1,352) between 2018 and 2023 (March) were of “any other” that included police inaction, negligence, delay in investigation, harassment and misbehaviour. Complaints alleging non-registration of FIR constituted the second highest, at 9%.

While it is noteworthy that the Assam PCA took note of these complaints, it underscores the need to expand the mandate of state PCAs beyond death, grievous hurt and rape in police custody such that common grievances do not go unaddressed. But instead, governments are further restricting the PCA’s mandate. Through the Assam Police (Amendment) Act 2021, the state government has excluded arrest or detention without due process, non-registration of FIRs and extortion (among other things) from the mandate of the state PCA. This reveals the extent of political resistance to accountability.

Even with their limited mandate, the PCAs are struggling to cope with the caseload. The pendency rate has shot up across most states.

Maharashtra, for instance, has seen an increase in case pendency from less than 1% in 2018 to 54% by the end of 2022. Similarly, in Kerala, it has gone up from 2% to 45% in the same period. Time taken to complete inquiries is another concern. Assam PCA has as many as 40 complaints received since 2018 which remain pending as of March 31, 2023.

The biggest concern remains the low proportion of complaints in which the PCAs established misconduct and recommended action. Upon completing an inquiry, the PCAs can either close the case or, where misconduct is found, recommend either a departmental enquiry or initiation of criminal investigation against the concerned personnel.

While the initiation of criminal proceedings has hardly been recommended, even when allegations were about death or injury in custody, departmental enquiries have been recommended in just a handful. Other than Assam where misconduct was found in 69 cases (between 2018 to March 2023), the number is less than 20 in other states: in Maharashtra, it is 15; in Kerala, 6; in Uttarakhand, just 4 during the same period, and in Delhi, 17 since 2020.

This may be attributed to several factors. Several PCAs include serving police officials as members, in violation of the Court’s directive. Most PCAs are yet to be assigned independent investigators, forcing them to depend on the police department itself to conduct inquiries. This defeats the purpose of external oversight. A deeper review of PCA inquiries will help identify the extent to which complaints are being closed either because they are found baseless, or lack adequate documentation, or where the complainant families either felt they were not provided adequate notice to prepare for hearings or were unable to follow through their complaints for any other reason.

Remedial measures, such as increasing PCA resources, specifying the list of documents to submit with complaints, and enforcing timelines for issuing notices need to be strengthened to improve PCA's effectiveness.

In several instances, governments and police departments have failed to act even on the few recommendations PCAs have made. Ultimately, unless police departments are given strict instructions to take necessary action where prima facie evidence of misconduct is found, PCA inquiries amount to a waste of public resources and only add to the struggles of the complainant/victim and his/her family in seeking accountability. Only a proactive approach to checking police misconduct and working with all stakeholders to push for accountability will help drive cultural changes in policing that stand to benefit the people as much as the police personnel themselves.

Devyani Srivastava is the co-author of CHRI's National Assessment Report on the Police Complaints Authorities in India, 2023. The report can be read here.