A secretary-level meeting of representatives of the NHRC and state-level rights panels was Friday held during which several suggestions were made for further promoting human rights, including those of under trials, officials said.
The meeting was held here to explore how the state-level commissions and the National Human Rights Commission could collaborate and share the best practices.
"Several important suggestions were made during the meeting to strengthen cooperation and partnership among various commissions. One suggestion was that all custodial deaths may not be due to police torture or apathy hence these should not be generalised in the data related to custodial deaths in the National Crime Record Bureau," a senior NHRC official said.
Secretary General, NHRC, Ambuj Sharma gave an overview of the various functions of the rights panel.
Neeta Verma, DG, NIC, spoke about how the concept of 'Digital India' has been put into place with the support of information technology by developing Common Services Centre portal.
She also launched Human Rights Commission Network Portal, HRCnet, which aims to connect all the human rights commissions, and developed by the National Informatics Centre (NIC) with the support of the NHRC.
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The meeting also explored the possibilities of collaboration with the District Legal Services Authority, State Legal Services Authority, as well as National Legal Services Authority for organising awareness workshops on human rights and related redressal mechanism.
"Governments should be asked to provide financial resources at the level of police chowki and police stations as lack of resources also become a reason for human rights violations of in custody people, who require to be provided food and other material," was another suggestion made during the meeting.
"State police organisations should be requested to replicate the Kerala model of deputing woman police personnel with the victim of sexual assault till the prosecution of the accused, was another suggestion," the official said.
The NHRC may support an empirical research to know the actual number of under trial prisoners and particularly those, who, due to mental problems continue to languish in jails without hearing of their matters to find out a way forward in such cases for delivering justice, he said, citing the suggestions made during the meeting.
The participants included senior officers from the NHRC, SHRCs and national as well as district and state legal services authorities, representing different states.