India: Third-party Submission to GANHRI Regarding the Accreditation Status of the National Human Rights Commission

In March 2025, the SCA recommended downgrading the NHRCI and gave it one year to bring its work in line with the Paris Principles. The signatories find that the Commission has not done so. Recent changes, such as more suo motu cases and better communications, are largely cosmetic. The NHRCI’s website no longer publishes data on deaths in police and judicial custody or on alleged extrajudicial killings.

The submission highlights long-standing concerns raised by the SCA since 2011:

• Police investigating police: The NHRCI’s Investigation Division is still staffed only by seconded police officers. This creates a clear conflict of interest when the Commission examines torture, custodial deaths and extrajudicial killings by law enforcement.
• Lack of independence and pluralism: Appointments remain opaque and government-driven. Two commissioner posts have been vacant for years, and women and minorities are under-represented.
• Weak engagement with civil society: The Commission has stayed silent on the cancellation of foreign-funding licences for more than 22,000 NGOs and on the arrest of human rights defenders.
• Silence on serious violations: The Commission has not responded meaningfully to excessive force against protesters, the abuse of counterterrorism laws against activists and journalists, punitive demolitions of Muslim homes, violence in Manipur, the expulsion of Rohingya refugees and Bengali-speaking Muslims, and mass removals from electoral rolls.

The organisations stress that a national human rights institution unable to hold police to account for torture and ill-treatment cannot fulfil its core protective role.