Overview

• Acting on a Dainik Bhaskar report, a bench of Justices Vikram Nath and Sandeep Mehta registered a suo motu PIL titled “Lack of functional CCTVs in police stations.”
• The report cited 11 police custody deaths in the last seven to eight months of 2025, with instances where footage was not provided due to claimed faulty cameras, full storage or confidentiality.
• The Court’s 2018 and December 2020 directions require audio‑enabled, night‑vision CCTV coverage across specified areas of every police station and in interrogation offices of central agencies including the CBI, NIA, ED, NCB, DRI and SFIO.
• Those orders mandate reliable power and internet and call for footage retention of at least one year, preferably up to 18 months, yet state filings have shown missing cameras, non-functional systems and inactive oversight committees, with only a few jurisdictions earlier found fully compliant.
• The new proceeding adds to monitoring in the Paramvir Singh Saini matter, where senior advocate Siddharth Dave assists the Court as amicus, and it comes against NCRB data showing an average of about 92 custodial deaths annually between 2000 and 2022.