These commissions are useful, but they are useful for a narrower set of things than most complainants expect, and the mismatch causes a lot of wasted time. The Protection of Human Rights Act, 1993 sets out precisely what they can do, and reading it before filing changes what you ask for.
How the State Commission comes to exist
The Act allows a State Government to constitute a State Human Rights Commission, chaired by a person who has been a Chief Justice or a Judge of a High Court, with a judicial member and a member with knowledge or practical experience in human rights. It then applies to the State Commission the provisions governing the National Commission's functions, its powers relating to inquiries, and the steps it may take after an inquiry.
What it can inquire into
The functions include inquiring, on its own motion or on a petition presented by a victim or any person on his behalf, or on the direction of any Court, into a complaint of violation of human rights or abetment of it, or of negligence in the prevention of such violation by a public servant. Negligence in prevention is worth remembering, because it reaches the supervising officer and not only the officer who acted. The Commission may also intervene in a court proceeding with that Court's approval, and may visit any jail or institution under the State Government's control where persons are detained.
There is a jurisdictional boundary. A State Commission may inquire only into violations in respect of matters relatable to the entries in the State List and the Concurrent List, which covers police and public order, and it is barred from inquiring where the National Commission or another commission constituted under any law is already inquiring into the same matter.
The powers that make an inquiry worth something
While inquiring, the Commission has all the powers of a civil court trying a suit, and in particular the power to summon and enforce the attendance of witnesses and examine them on oath, to require discovery and production of documents, to receive evidence on affidavit, to requisition any public record or a copy of it from any court or office, and to issue commissions for the examination of witnesses or documents. It may require any person to furnish information on points relevant to the inquiry, subject to any privilege that person may claim. A gazetted officer specially authorised by it may enter a building where it has reason to believe a relevant document may be found and seize the document or take copies. Proceedings before it are deemed to be judicial proceedings.
That is a real fact finding apparatus, and it is why a commission inquiry can extract the arrest memo, the station diary and the medical record when a letter cannot.
The Act provides that the Commission or the State Commission shall not inquire into any matter after the expiry of one year from the date on which the act constituting the violation of human rights is alleged to have been committed. There is no discretion written into that sentence. File early. If you are waiting for a criminal case to progress before complaining, you will very often lose this remedy altogether while you wait.
What it can do at the end, and what it cannot
On completing an inquiry, the Commission may recommend to the concerned Government or authority the payment of compensation or damages to the complainant, the victim or members of his family; recommend the initiation of prosecution or such other suitable action against the person concerned; recommend any further action it thinks fit; approach the Supreme Court or the High Court concerned for such directions, orders or writs as that Court may deem necessary; recommend immediate interim relief at any stage of the inquiry; and provide a copy of the inquiry report to the petitioner. It must send its report with recommendations to the Government, which has to forward its comments and the action taken or proposed within one month or such further time as the Commission allows, and the Commission then publishes the report together with those comments and the action taken.
Every operative word there is a recommendation, a report or an approach to a court. The Commission does not convict, does not punish, and does not itself order the State to pay you. Its two hardest instruments are the power to go to the High Court itself and publication, and neither is a decree. The Act separately allows a State Government, with the concurrence of the Chief Justice of the High Court, to specify a Court of Session in each district as a Human Rights Court.
How to use it well
- File within weeks, not months. The one year bar is absolute in its terms.
- Ask for the specific relief the Act allows. A recommendation of compensation, a recommendation for prosecution, interim relief, and a direction to produce the arrest memo, station diary and medical record.
- Attach a one page chronology and the documents. The Commission's strength is fact finding; give it facts to find.
- Run the court remedy in parallel. Compensation is actually ordered by a High Court in a writ petition, and our guides on compensation for illegal detention and on filing a writ petition in the High Court set out that route. Where a person is still in custody, the urgent remedy is not a commission complaint at all, and our note on habeas corpus against an arrest and remand explains why.