The Bombay High Court has granted interim bail to a man who alleges he was subjected to physical torture during police custody.

The petition, filed by Sunil Rathod, claimed that his brother was arrested by the Vasai Virar police at around 3 AM on November 5 and brutally assaulted. The case was heard by a division bench consisting of Justice Arif Doctor and Justice Somshekhar Sundaresan.

The bench had earlier ordered the man's immediate hospitalization at JJ Hospital, where a medical report confirmed an injury on the right side of his back, accompanied by contusions of various sizes and tenderness. The report further revealed that the man had been beaten with sticks, a leather belt, and fists, resulting in him losing consciousness. 

It was also claimed that after regaining consciousness, the man endured further torture. He was allegedly forced to place his thumb impression and signature on several blank pages. Additionally, he was coerced into implicating his father, the primary accused in the FIR, by falsely admitting to a debt of Rs. 3 crores supposedly owed by his father to the complainant.

The bench in its order while granting interim bail to the man noted that “the treatment by the magistrate of the complaint of physical torture, the inexplicable change of view on the need for arrest the Detenu that too at 3:00 a.m. after he had been released the previous evening, the intervening threat of legal action by lawyers of the Detenu alleging physical torture, and the nothings in the case diary about apprehension of conspiracy to stall investigations on the basis of the alleged torture, the arrest of the Detenu prima facie appears to be illegal,” the order reads.

The bench also directed the authorities to retrieve and preserve all CCTV footage from cameras outside the ACP's office at Chandan Park, Virar, as well as around the Vasai Virar Municipal Corporation Hospital. 

Furthermore, the bench sought a response from the authorities regarding significant lapses, including the availability of a safe space for conducting interrogations without oversight. The bench raised concerns about such spaces being located on the premises of a police officer's private residence, which is not officially a “police station” and falls outside the coverage of CCTV surveillance.