The court further held that bypassing mandatory judicial inquiries and replacing them with executive processes amounted to “administrative lawlessness”. The Jharkhand High Court on Thursday termed custodial deaths a “profound failure of the constitutional machinery” and pulled up the state government for bypassing mandatory judicial inquiries in more than half of the custodial death cases over the past several years. Hearing a PIL filed by Md. Mumtaz Ansari, a Division Bench led by Chief Justice M S Sonak observed that “the occurrence of a fatality within the coercive control of the State, legally categorised as a ‘custodial death’, represents a profound failure of the constitutional machinery.” The court made the observations while examining data submitted by the Jharkhand government, which showed that 427 custodial deaths were reported in Jharkhand between 2018 and 2026.…