Sarita Bhagat Giri (Rajasthan), who has been in jail for nearly nine years. He was set to receive a four-year jail sentence after he was sentenced to death in 2012. “In the past nine years of my life, at least 7,000 people in Jaipur were murdered,” he says. “I was brought to jail as a prisoner of war.”

Kamla has had only sporadic contact with his mother; she fled her home in Madhya Pradesh after police allegedly tortured her son, and has been living a homeless life in Agra, a city 20-40km north of Jaipur. He says he doesn’t speak of his ordeal. He blames the authorities. “I am in prison because of my father,” he says. “He has spent 17 years in prison – my father has not been in prison since he was a child.”

Rajasthan’s government has refused to publicly name the police chief charged with the murder. Since his arrest, though, officers have been made to register their complaints. They have alleged that Kolkata did not investigate their complaints and let them off the hook. Kolkata has been unable to comment.

Harijan Das, 28, had just left his home in Agra, India, to go on holidays when three men barged in at gunpoint and held him for four hours. “They said ‘Take along your money and belongings’,” he says. “I tried to refuse and that’s how they shot me in the abdomen. The police said they were searching for Maoists. I didn’t know the Maoists, but they were the Maoist outfit, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh’s cadres.”

Das, who is divorced and says he cannot speak of his crime due to privacy fears, only learned he was in court a couple of days ago. “I thought I would die,” he says. “A doctor told me they would let me go with a few days’ medical care, but I am very weak with my stomach.”

Pradeep Singh is another victim. He was found dead in his residence in the state capital Delhi last December, with two bullet holes in his stomach, one to the head. “The policemen who fired on me were from the state’s special police unit – the Special Cell for special cases,” he says. “The police chief has not