An Indian court has handed down the death penalty to nine police officers for the custodial deaths of a father and son during the pandemic, bringing to a close a case that had caused national outrage and renewed scrutiny of police brutality.
P Jeyaraj, a 58-year-old trader, and his son J Benicks, 31, died within days of being detained during the Covid lockdown. They were accused by police in the southern state of Tamil Nadu of keeping their mobile phone shop open beyond permitted hours, an allegation investigators later said was unfounded.
Delivering the ruling on Monday, the trial judge described the deaths as a grave abuse of power and placed the case in the “rarest of the rare” category, a legal threshold reserved for the most extreme crimes in India.
“They did this with the intention of killing,” the judge said.
According to the prosecution, the two men were stripped and tortured through the night at the Sattankulam police station, often in front of each other.
“Where there was power, there should be responsibility. Jayaraj and Benicks were unarmed and were tortured at regular intervals all through the night at the police station,” the judge said.
The court found the violence wasn’t incidental but deliberate, carried out as retribution after a confrontation with officers. “They attacked unarmed people. They should not be forgiven. They should not be given lesser sentences based on their age or family background,” the judge said. “They are all educated,” the judge said.
Investigators from the Central Bureau of Investigation, the federal agency which took over the case amid public pressure, said the officers tortured the father and son to “teach them a lesson on how to behave with the police”.
#BREAKING | #Sathankulamcase
— Live Law (@LiveLawIndia) April 6, 2026
Madurai court awards DEATH SENTENCE to all nine convicted police officers for the custodial death of father-son duo Jayaraj and Bennix#Sathankulamcustodialdeath pic.twitter.com/MWpSx29LGf
The agency concluded that the officers knowingly inflicted injuries severe enough to cause death. Evidence presented in court also pointed to attempts to cover up the crime, including forcing the victims to clean their own blood and destroying material evidence.
Ten officers were originally charged, but one died during the trial after contracting Covid. The remaining nine were convicted last month of murder, criminal conspiracy, and destruction of evidence.
CBI says: “Thereafter father and son were mercilessly beaten and brutally tortured by the accused police officials during the intervening night of 19 and 20th June 2020. Benniks succumbed to injuries on 22nd and Jeyraj on 23rd June” https://t.co/omNCYHm3Jc pic.twitter.com/Q4d9kcfWy0
— Vijay Kumar S (@vijaythehindu) April 6, 2026
The case had sparked widespread protests across Tamil Nadu in 2020, with politicians, activists and public figures demanding accountability. The deaths became a flashpoint in a broader debate about custodial violence in India, where rights groups say hundreds of people die in custody each year and allegations of torture remain persistent.
The death penalty handed down to the nine policemen in the 2020 Sattankulam custodial death case of trader P. Jayaraj (58) and his son J. Benicks (31) should serve as a grim reminder to the country’s uniformed forces: when the law - however frayed it may be - finally catches up,… pic.twitter.com/nWczwIdBNu
— Piyush Rai (@Benarasiyaa) April 6, 2026
In his ruling, the trial judge said: “The police personnel were mentally sound and well-educated. They were drawing government salaries. Those who should protect and safeguard the public acted in such a manner. It was a case of the fence eating the crop.”
The court also imposed fines totalling more than Rs10m (£81,000) on the convicted officers.
While India retains the death penalty, executions are rare, with the last carried out in 2020. Four men convicted in 2013 for the 2012 gang rape and murder of a young woman in the capital Delhi were executed in March 2020 after years of legal appeals, in a case that drew global attention to sexual violence in India.
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