When I asked human rights workers in India why the police torture people, I often received the same reply: “Because they can get away with it.” When I asked them why a police officer would want to engage in such violence in the first place, many of the same explanations came up over and over: greed, the desire for power, and bias against vulnerable groups.
India is a country where police torture is routine.
I asked these questions of human rights lawyers, activists, and educators while conducting twelve months of fieldwork in India for my book on how police officers understand violence and respond to human rights messages. But most of my in-depth interviews for the book were with police officers themselves. Through long conversations in their homes, in restaurants and cafes, and in police stations and paramilitary bunkers, I probed the moral universe the police inhabit. Like many other nations, India is a country where police torture is routine. While there are no clear statistics given that torture is difficult to report and record, local and international NGOs lament its pervasive occurrence. I wanted to know how the police understand the violence they commit and what their understanding means for how they respond to human rights efforts.
