Raipur: Lehra Bai never went to school. What she did with paperwork after her husband died would test a trained lawyer.
Her husband, Shravan Suryavanshi Tamre, was arrested in January 2024 on allegations of possessing mahua liquor. He died a few days later. The postmortem recorded injuries, and the family questioned the circumstances of the death.
A mother of two, Lehra Bai built the case herself — complaints against officials, documents, and finally a petition that reached the Supreme Court. The court heard it and came down hard on the conduct of the officials involved.
The orders were specific. The family was granted interim compensation of ₹25 lakh. A CBI investigation was directed. Criminal proceedings were ordered against officials found guilty.
The legal principle at the centre of it is the one that matters beyond this family: a death in custody carries the responsibility of the state. In this case the postmortem recorded injuries, and the court proceeded on the basis that those injuries were sustained while Tamre was in custody. That is the finding that turned a family's complaint into an order against the machinery.
What the Supreme Court has done is put the burden where it belongs. When a person is taken into custody and comes back dead, the state has to explain how. Interim compensation is the court's recognition that the family should not have to wait for a trial to be compensated for a death the state is answerable for.
The criminal proceedings against the officials are yet to conclude, and the CBI investigation is only beginning. What it establishes will decide the next stage of the case, and whether anyone is held individually responsible for the injuries recorded on the body.
For now, what stands is the fact of who fought it. A woman from a Chhattisgarh village, with no schooling, took on a state machinery and got the country's highest court to order an inquiry into how her husband died.