Police killings in India continue to go unpunished, according to a Human Rights Watch (HRW) [advocacy website] report [text] Monday. Citing India’s National Crime Records Bureau [official website], the report states that 591 people died in police custody in the five years between 2010 and 2015. The vast majority of such deaths are recorded as suicide, illness or natural causes, and only a small portion are attributed to police violence, which HRW claims is an inaccurate reflection of reality. Further, the report asserts that there were no convictions during that period even for the deaths which were recorded as having been caused by police assault. HRW investigated 17 cases in-depth and ultimately drew the conclusion that the issue is largely caused by permissive cover-ups of misconduct. A call for the Indian Parliament to ratify the UN Convention against Torture [document, PDF] concludes the document.

Calls for police reform remain an international theme: police in Bahrain have been accused of abuse, Pakistan faced a similar report [text] from HRW in September, and American police continue to face charges of racial bias and misconduct [JURIST reports]. Though solutions such as body cameras [JURIST report] are being tested, they are not yet widely adopted in the US or internationally.