Amnesty International, which monitors human rights violation in different countries, had remarked in an old report that in India, there was widespread public acceptance of custodial violence and, I could have added, extrajudicial killing too, by the police. The reasons for such acceptance are not hard to fathom. In India, the judicial process and system just do not function; the consequences do not bode well for the common man, and also, tragically, the police. The corruption and inefficiency indices in our justice system—be it at the level of the police, prosecutors, defending advocates, judicial officers or jailers—are so high and pathetic that public pressure, transmitted through the political leadership, forces the police to resort to such measures to justify their own existence!