पीपल्स यूनियन फॉर डेमोक्रेटिक राइट्स (पी.यू.डी.आर) 1980 के दशक से ही दिल्ली की पुलिस हिरासत में होने वाली मौतों पर तथ्यान्वेषण को रिपोर्ट के जरिये से सामने लाता रहा है | इन पड़तालों में पी.यू.डी.आर ने अक्सर यह पाया कि पुलिस हिरासत में दी जाने वाली यातानाएँ गैर-इरादतन मौतों का परिणाम थीं, हिरासत में दी जाने वाली प्रताड़ना जो पुलिस के नियमित कार्य का एक हिस्सा ब

On 22 May 1987, PAC personnel of UP reached Hashimpura, Meerut, took away about 50 Muslim men from a crowd outside a mosque, shot dead at least 42 of the men, and threw their bodies into a canal. On 21 March 2015, a Delhi Sessions Court accepted that the PAC personnel had committed these murders, but acquitted the policemen charged on account of insufficient evidence. Twenty eight years after the brutal massacre of Muslims by state forces, the guilty in uniform have not been identified and are roaming free. 

Peoples Union for Democratic Rights condemns the killing of Sai Reddy, a correspondent of  Deshbandhu, a Hindi newspaper, based in Bijapur in south Bastar, Chhattisgarh  on December 6, 2013. In a statement issued on December 10, 2013, the South Regional Committee of CPI(Maoist) claimed that  Sai Reddy had “played an active role against the people’s movement in Basaguda and Usur areas over last two decades”, and therefore was condemned to death.

PUDR strongly condemns the death of Khalid Mujahid, an undertrial arrested in 2007 in connection with bomb blasts in UP earlier that year. Mujahid died on 19 May, 2013 when he was being escorted by a team of the Uttar Pradesh state police from a court in Faizabad to Lucknow jail. His death while under police escort in what is a clear case of custodial killing raises several questions - the rights of citizens, especially Muslim youth; the character of the police and state; the truth behind terror cases and arrests.

 In the present context of recurring instances of deaths in custody in Tihar, it seems Right to life enshrined in Article 21 of the Indian Constitution has become an exclusive right that ceases to be a fundamental right, behind the closed doors of prisons. The alleged suicide of the Delhi gang rape accused Ram Singh in Tihar, reverberates the same approach of sheer disdain on the part of the jail authorities, towards the rights of the prisoners.