The Centre’s lack of response to a judicial direction to install CCTV cameras in the offices of agencies like CBI, ED and NIA to prevent custodial torture prompted the Supreme Court on Tuesday (November 25, 2025) to ask if the Union government is taking the apex court “very lightly”.
It has been five years since a Supreme Court judgment made it mandatory for the police and central probe agencies to fix and maintain CCTV cameras in police stations and offices of central law enforcement agencies with powers of “interrogation”.
The court was shocked to discover that custodial cruelty has far from faded with reports about 11 custodial deaths in eight months in Rajasthan.
A Bench of Justices Vikram Nath and Sandeep Mehta chose to suo motu re-examine the level of compliance shown by States, Union Territories and the Centre to the 2020 judgment of the apex court.
However, the Bench, on Tuesday (November 25, 2025), found that the response to its concern from the States and UnioN Territories was at best lukewarm, with only 11 of them condescending to even file compliance reports. The Centre did not file one.
