Humiliation Does Not Become Justice When the State Performs It

The Mirror Problem: When the State Answers Humiliation With Humiliation Picture the

morning of 27 October in Behala. The investigating officer has a legitimate task: take the accused to the scene and reconstruct what happened. The crime is grave. A youth, his friend and his father were beaten, stripped and forced to walk naked at gunpoint by the family of a minor girl.

Days earlier, residents had tried to vandalise that family's house before police intervened. Now a crowd watches again. The easy answer would be that the officer must simply protect the accused. But the hesitation is real.

The crowd is angry and a visible show of police firmness may calm it and discourage further vigilante violence. The victims were humiliated in public; some will feel that justice should be seen too. In a State where such parades have become common, an officer who refuses may look soft to superiors and the public.

That morning, the accused were taken through the neighbourhood in shorts, barefoot and roped at the waist.

What Was Actually Done and Why It Matters

A crime-scene reconstruction is an investigative step: it helps police record how a crime happened. It does not require the accused to be dressed down, barefoot or roped for an audience. Once those choices are made, the purpose shifts from investigation to display.

The Association for Protection of Democratic Rights put it plainly: the police were normalising revenge and imposing punishment that only courts may decide. This was not an isolated case. Accused persons, mostly facing extortion allegations, have been paraded in vests and undergarments with ropes around their waists in Howrah, Kolkata and other parts of West Bengal.

On 7 July 2026, the Calcutta High Court orally observed that publicly parading an accused is impermissible and infringes human rights.

Applying the Framework

Two ideas carry this case. The first is constitutional: Article 21 protects dignity and in Prem Shankar Shukla (1980) the Supreme Court held that routinely handcuffing and parading prisoners violates it. Under Section 43(3) of the BNSS, handcuffs are allowed only in exceptional cases, with reasons recorded.

Dignity does not depend on how serious the accusation is; it attaches to the person and an accused has not been convicted. The second is a mirror test. If the State's response to a crime looks like the crime itself, the State has stopped being the law and become another party seeking revenge.

Here the alleged offence was public humiliation; the police response was public humiliation. The resemblance is the ethical failure.

The Resolution

The officer should conduct the reconstruction with the accused in ordinary clothes, without ropes unless reasons are recorded, behind a cordon and away from the crowd. That is the right decision. It has a cost. The crowd may read restraint as protection of the guilty and the officer may face criticism from superiors or political voices that applaud parades.

Some victims may feel denied a visible reckoning. But the reckoning belongs to the courtroom. A police force that humiliates suspects teaches the crowd that humiliation is justice, the very lesson that produced the original crime.

Why This Matters for the Exam For

GS4, this case shows that dignity is tested hardest when the accused is least sympathetic. A public servant's restraint is not leniency; it is what separates the law from the mob.