Torture in India

Torture is routine in every one of India's 25 states. Every day in policecells and military barracks throughout the land pain and indignity aredeliberately inflicted by paid agents of the state. On men, women and evenchildren. They are beaten senseless, given electric shocks or have their limbscrushed by heavy rollers. Sexual torture, including rape, is common. AmnestyInternationalThe law prohibits torture, but there is credible evidence that itis common throughout India. The authorities often use torture duringinterrogations. In other cases, they torture detainees to extort money andsometimes as summary punishment.

No country in the world permits torture as an acceptable form of police ormilitary practice, however, many governments give tacit approval to the realityof torture by not ensuring that a suspect's rights are sufficiently defended andperpetrators of the abuses are brought to justice; India is one such country.

To research the issue of torture in India is considerably difficult. TheIndian government has consistently prohibited independent human rightsorganisations from investigating allegations of torture in the country. Thesegrou ps include Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch-Asia, theInternational Red Cross, the British Parliamentary Human Rights Group, and eventhe UN Human Rights Rapporteurs (India is obliged to permit access under theconditions of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights).

Because of this refusal the number of offences is difficult to ascertain,however, reports by human rights and lawyers' organisations inside India,reports by India's National Human Rights Commission, the Indian govern ment,newspapers, periodicals and personal testimonies given to Khalsa Human Rightshave all been analysed to put together the following summary.

The Indian government has consistently refuted many of the allegations that itpermits torture, and it has, unconvincingly, stated that all those found to havepractised torture have been quickly and sufficiently punished. Needless to say,impartial investigations by reputable organisations would be in the government'sbest interest, thereby reducing the considerable international concern over thelevel of violations.

Reasons for Torture -- to counter secessionist groups .

Since India' s Independence a number of political or religious groups havewanted specific states to break away from the federation, in a number of casesthe tactics used have been violent and of a terrorist nature. In the last tenyears independence mov ements have been formed in Assam, Jammu & Kashmir,Manipur, Mizoram, Nagaland and Punjab. In each the state authorities or centralgovernment has responded with severe clamp-downs on civil liberties, draftedEmergency Legislation which contravenes standards set out to safeguard the rightto arbitrary detention, arrest, and life, and empowered security personnel, bothpolice and paramilitary units , to freely operate when undermining militantactivities.

In each of the above states allegations of torture are rife. Whatfacilitates the possibility of torture is the sheer number of interrogationcentres. In Kashmir every branch of the security forces has its own detentioncentres (numbering well into the twenties), and hundreds of temporary centresare set up when forces are mounting cordon and search operations. In eachcentre the detainee has no access to the outside world, is not permitted visits by lawyers, magistrates or family members, and is held for anything between afew hours and several weeks (legislation actually permits detention withoutcharge or trial for a maximum of one year).

If a person is suspected of being a militant then he or she will be handedover to the CIA and taken to a Joint Detention Centre (JDC) where the person canbe held and interrogated for additional months. It is only when the personreaches the JDC that a FIR is made out and acknowledgement of the detention is official, before such time the individual is completely at the mercy of thepolice. This is assuming a FIR is even registered. According to Human RightsWatch-Asia, Lawyers in Kashmir told [us] that they have filed some 15,000 petitions since1990 calling on state authorities to reveal the whereabouts of detainees and thecharges against them.

-- to extract confessions

It is commonly recognised that the extraction of confessions, orinformation which may ensure an arrest, is the most likely reason for the use oftorture. This is due to the fact that confessions, under ordinary or Emergencylegislation, are permitted i n a court of law. Another is that an arrestingofficer has to produce a suspect before a magistrate within 24 hours. This lawwas initiated to protect the rights of a citizen, however, because policepractice seems to be arrest first then gather evidence the law puts immensepressure on the arresting officer to secure a conviction in very little time; ifthe suspect confesses then there is less work for the officer.

In the following interview J. Singh retold of his treatment after he waspicked up by police in 1992 because of his peaceful campaigning on behalf of aSikh political party: A few days later they arrested me again, under Piara Singh, SHO of Lambra. When taken to the police station I was stripped naked.They opened my legs very wide, as far as they could, and stood on my thighs andkicked me with their boots. I was nearly unconscious. They beat me with theirbelts 50-60 times.

At night they tied my legs together with some chains. They tied my hair to agirder on the ceiling. When I tried to sleep there was always an officer whowould wake me up. They kept my hands tied behind my back. They repeated thetreatment for a couple of days, mainly beating with the belt. The belt was 4-5inches wide. I still have marks on my ankles. They kept me for 3-4 days,although the police denied that they had arrested me. However, after pressurefrom people from my village and the Akali leader , Kuldeep Singh Badala, theysaid they had arrested me, then I was released.

After that they raided my home, but because I was not there theyarrested my younger brother and father. They were kept at the CIA headquarters,Jullundhur, for about a month and a half...[To get them released] I presentedmyself to the police, they took me in and beat me like before, ten times everyfive minutes, with the belt and widening my legs as before. They would beatsomeone one day for two hours and then the next day wou ld let them rest and thenext day beat them again. Often they would kick us and hit us. Once they hit mewith a stick in the penis which started bleeding. They were asking me aboutJagvinder Singh and Avtar Singh Mandair, which organisations they were connectedwith, this was their main question.

Then they brought two people to us. One of them was Avtar Singh Mandair.They were beaten so badly we could hardly recognise them. They were asking meand Jagdish Singh [a fellow detainee], to recognise them and the other two torecognise us...One day they took me, Jagdish Singh and one of his relatives,they put us on a trolley, tied a bandage to our eyes, and took us outside, neara canal. They asked us about the whereabouts of Tarlok Singh Babber and KulbirSingh Barapind. They fired shots in the air to scare us. They said they wouldmake us an encounter (see p. 7), if we did not give them theinformation, and they put us under the water, keeping us underneath, and theyhit us with their rifle butts.

Proportionally, when a suspect is held for ordinary criminal activity, thevictims of torture are the unemployed, migrant workers or habitants of thenumerous urban slums. In most cases they are illiterate, have no family (exceptsimilarly destitute people), and little access to the authorities who may beable to help. Mostly, these violations go unnoticed, occasionally, however, whenthe incident is so horrific, the media and public are attracted. For example, inJune 1990, in the state of Maharashtra, a teenage nomadic tribal boy was beatento death for protecting his pregnant sister who the police were trying to rape.

It started when police wanted to take Parvati Rusankote to the Tulzapurstation, her brother Namdeo Atak insisted on accompanying her. When they beganto assault Parvati Rusankote, Namdeo tried to stop them, Some of the 7policemen tied Namdeo to a table and began whipping him with their belts andhitting him with their lathis [bamboo sticks]. Meanwhile, therest caught hold of me. One of them gripped my hair and ripped apart my blouse,while another disrobed me and stood on my thighs...They kept abusing me and alsokicked me on the stomach.

An examination of Namdeo Atak' s corpse found 40 external injuries and manybroken bones.

-- to coerce . In areas of political militancy it is not uncommon for men tolive apart from their families. This leaves, in some cases, entire householdscontaining only females. They become the inevitable targets to appease the senseof frustration the security forces feel at not being able to capture suspects.Often a simple threat to the household morally blackmails the man to returnhome; the threat is made to his honour of not being able to protect his family.In more serious cases abduction, torture, including rap e, and sometimes deathare the result of police coercion.

The relevancy of rape and threats of a sexual nature in this form ofcounter-insurgency has been made by Human Rights Watch-Asia: In the past, rapehas often been accepted as spoils of war or mischaracterised as incidental tothe conflict or as a privately-motivated form of sexual abuse rather than anabuse of power that implicates public responsibility. Reports of the widespreaduse of rape as a tactic of war in the former Yugoslavia have been ins trumentalin focusing attention on the function of rape in war and have provokedinternational condemnation.

One such case was that which occurred on 1 October, 1992, when a BSF patrolreturning from a crackdown in the village of Bakhikar, in Jammu & Kashmir,had one of its members killed in an attack. It is reported that following theattack BSF forces rampaged through the nearby village of Batekote, killing tenpeople and burning houses and grain stores.\rdblquote They then went onto thevillage of Gurihakhar were it is alleged they raped at least 4 women, [We]also interviewed the mother of a 13 year-old girl in the same town who providedan account of rape as if she, and not her daughter were raped, apparently toprotect her daughter from public humiliation . As a rape victim, the daughtermay be socially ostracised and unable even to marry.

-- as punishment

. In a country where the courts are overwhelmed with criminal cases it isnot uncommon for the police to play the roles of judge and juror. (The problem of the backlog of cases was clarified in statistics released by the Ministry ofLaw & Justice. In March, 1994, 38,728 cases were pending with the SupremeCourt alone, and 270,000 in the various High Courts throughout the country, withan additional 2.7 m illion cases in the subordinate courts.)

One case was that of a man called Jugataram. It is reported that he wasarrested by the Barmer police of Rajasthan on the charge of abducting hisemployer's daughter in February, 1994. When Jugataram refused to adm it to thekidnapping the Assistant SP, Sumerdan, and a constable, Kishore Singh, in thepresence of the SHO, Sohan Singh, cut of Jugataram' s penis. In an effort tocover up the crime the officers then registered a case of attempted suicideagainst Jugataram. Following an investigation by the state authorities and theRajasthan High Court, the officers had criminal cases issued against them andJugataram was awarded compensation of Rs. 10,000

In a well-publicised case the Punjab & Haryana High Court ordered thestate authorities to pay compensation to four women who, after being foundguilty of pick-pocketing, had the words thief tattooed on theirforeheads by police.

Again in areas where the security forces are countering militant activitiesthere have been allegations of arbitrary reprisals against the civilianpopulation because of militant successes. Masroof Sultan, a 19 year-old collegestudent from Batamaloo in Kashmir, was travelling on a bus when it was stoppedand searche d by members of the BSF. He alleges that he was picked on and beatenby four of the soldiers. He was then blindfolded and, along with three otheryoung men, taken to a safe house where he was forced to admit hewas a militant. When he denied the allegation he was stripped, his hands andknees where tied together, he was hung from a pole and beaten until his leg wasbroken.

Orders were then given to take Masroof Sultan to a detention centre calledPapa II, a centre near Srinagar where allegations of tort ure are oftenreported. In Papa II, metal rings and wires were attached to his body and he wasgiven electric shocks ten or twelve times, on his toes, his right arm, legs andother sensitive parts of his body, until he started bleeding from the nose and lost consciousness. He was told by one member of the security personnel:

Last night in Batamaloo four of our persons were killed. We know thatyou are innocent, but we have to kill you [because] our four persons have beenkilled.

He was then taken out to a secluded area about an hours drive from thedetention centre. He was dragged out of the jeep, stood against a tree, andshot. They shot my legs first...I fell down. After ten minutes,they came back and found him still alive. An officer told one of th e BSF men toshoot him in the heart, but the shot, hitting him in the chest, again was notfatal. Masroof Sultan says he was then shot a third time and hit in the neck andsurvived by pretending to be dead. He believes that the three others were killednear the same spot, but their bodies have not been found. A doctor's reportconfirmed the allegations of Masroof Sultan being shot. It also recorded thathis body had been considerably violated.

--to intimidate

This is one of the measures taken by the security forces (often with theknowledge, and sometimes with the sanction of the state authorities) to counterany public support for secessionist groups. Usually security forces targetspecific propaganda campai gns to a beleaguered local population (militantgroups impose similar pressures), but, sometimes the propagandais more physical and direct. This is in the form of crackdowns .Under the guise of tracking down militants the security forces pick up membersfrom the local population, torture them, and then leave their bodies by theroadside as examples.

Muzaffar Ahmed Mirza, 35, is an Arabic teacher in Kashmir. He was arrestedon 4 October, 1991, following a crackdown by police on Tral, a village 4 kmsouth of Srinagar. He was beaten and given electric shock treatment to hisgenitals. Following this, an iron rod was inserted into his rectum and pushedthrough to his chest. When found he was in extreme pain and had to be givenemergency surgery because he was coughing up blood and had signs of pe ritonitis(inflammation of abdominal cavity). X-rays of his chest showed he had a rupturedlung, thus supporting the above allegation, and the next day underwent chestsurgery which revealed a large laceration of the diaphragm and left lung.However, afte r two weeks Muzaffar Ahmed Mirza died of internal infection.

Methods of Torture -dislocation of bones.

Commonly reported in Assam, Jammu & Kashmir and Punjab (particularly inareas where the Punjab police or Punjab paramilitary units are operating). Herethe victim is held down and the legs opened as far as possible, displacing theballs of the joints. A lthough they are put back, as with any dislocated bone,they will never function properly again, and reports of victims not being towalk without pain for many years are not uncommon.

the aeroplane. Here the victim's hands are tied behind the back,and then the rope is thrown over a beam. Officers then pull on this to raise theperson off the ground, almost immediately dislocating the shoulders. Whilst inthis position the person is spun around and hit with lathis[bamboo sticks] or rifle butts, or punched and kicked. Some victims have allegedthey were in this position for over an hour.

--electric shocks. This is a very common form of torture. Sometimes cattleprods are used (one has only to think of the toughness of a cow hind whencompared to human flesh to understand how painful this can be), but mostly it isa crude form of electrical device in which the touching bare wires cause theshock. Fingertips, nipples, tongue, genitals and inside the anus or vagina arethe areas mostly abused.

-- roller treatment. This has been most commonly reported in the states ofAssam, Jammu & Kashmir, and Punjab. The victim is held down on the floor (inthe case of Sikhs, who do not cut their hair, he or she is forced to sit uprightand one officer pulls on the unravelled length of hair whilst pressing a kneeinto the back), and a large wooden log is laid across the legs. Two officersstand or sit on the log, roll ing it backwards and forwards, thereby crushingthe muscles.

-- rape and sexual abuse. As illustrated above, rape and sexual abuse hasbeen used in the fight against militancy, however, both men and women can facesexual assault in ordinary criminal cases. The PUDR reported 24cases of custodial rape between 1989-93.

The PUDR noted that there have been no convictions and that the authoritiesreinstated 3 of 10 policemen dismissed in connection with these cases.

In another incident, on 1 September, 1994, a peaceful procession, estimatedat 12,000 people (men, women and children) of pro- Uttarakhand activists wasattacked by police. There have been mixed reports on the reasons for the attack.What is certain is that during the clashes a number of women were arbitrarilydragged away from the crowds, robbed, beaten and then raped by officers who sawan opportunity whilst order was temporarily broken. A report by the PUCL givesdetails, from eyewitness accounts, of how the police fired indiscriminately intothe crowd from rooftops, burnt shops and businesses, attacked and beat anyone intheir way, and how a complete busload of women were taken away under policeescort.

r An interview with one woman, who eventually returned after her abduction bypolice, said ...the jawans [armed police officers] and policemen hadstripped them of their jewellery and cash, had beaten them up severely and thatmany of my friends were missing or had been raped.

The exact figure of people killed and women abducted and raped is unlikelyto be ever known as magisterial and political interference led to a cover-upimmediately after the event (state employees cleaned away marks early the nextmorning and allegedly d octored medical reports reduced the number of dead andinjured taken into local hospitals). However, at the time of writing, a CBIinvestigation has indicted the police with causing the deaths of four people.

-- water immersion.

This is where the victim is forcibly held under water (or there faces areheld in a bucket of water) for periods long enough to cause unconsciousness.

- beatings.

Punching and kicking by a prison guard or police officer is such a commonoccurrence that one victim interviewed did not consider this treatment torture.Physical abuse of suspects or convicted criminals almost appears to be part ofthe person's punishment. The most commonly reported abuses are beatings on thesoles of the feet. An extreme case of brutality towards detainees was in theriot on prisoners perpetrated by guards at Pi libhit jail on 8 November, 1993.In total 7 people were killed and 27 injured.

-- depravation of food, water, and sleep

. One victim interviewed, see J. Singh above, spoke of a particular officerwhose sole duty was to keep him awake.

-- incommunicado detention. This is detention without access to the outsideworld. In secessionist areas Emergency legislation has been drafted to givepolice sweeping powers of detention. (In Punjab security personnel are actuallyfree from prosecution even if guilty of human rights abuses.) For instanceindividuals can be held for a year without any charge or trial; some Articlespresume guilt with the suspect having to prove his or her innocence; the reasonfor detention can be withheld from the detainee; the identity of witne sses canbe kept secret; bail is unlikely; and, during detention, access to a lawyer,doctor or magistrate is forbidden and even family visits are considered a luxury (in other words if the family can bribe the SHO).

-- Torture Leading to Death

The gravest concern for all victims of torture is that the officerssupervising the interrogation let their juniors go too far, this results in acustodial death. The prevalence of torture by police in lockups throughoutIndia is borne out by the number of cases of deaths in police custody.

According to Amnesty International, between 1985-93 there were 484custodial deaths in India. This, however, is likely to be a conservative figureas Amnesty derived its information from deaths which had been publicised. In amore recent report, the organisation recorded in one state alone, Jammu &Kashmir, 715 deaths in a four-year period. In both cases the numbers of officerssuspended or convicted of murder was negligible, 6 in the former and none in thelatter.

One example of custodial death is that of Bibi Resham Kaur. She wasdetained on 22 October, 1993, by district SP Manmohan Singh of Khanna Police,Punjab. The reason for her detention was to discover the whereabouts of BhaiJagjit Singh, her husband, and a sus pected militant. It is reported that as shewas unwilling, or perhaps unable, to disclose any information, her 8 month-oldson, Simranjit Singh, was held down on a block of ice, in the hope of forcinghis mother to talk. On the 23 October, 1993, the polic e announced that BibiResham Kaur died in custody, adding that she died at her own hands. So far therehas been no notification that the body of Bibi Resham Kaur received anindependent or police post mortem

When it was announced that she had died, the police contacted the villagesarpanch (elected village official) and Bibi\rquote s sister, Bhasi Kaur, tosimply perform the funeral rites. The suggestion that she took her own life isone of the three improbable excuses the police give to cover-up custodial death.The second is the person was shot whilst trying to escape. The third is that theperson died in anencounter The police interpretation of an encounter is where a person is killed during a clash between securitypersonnel and armed militant groups . The common scenario is when members ofthe security forces are allegedly ambushed and during the crossfire thesuspect-in-transit is killed. It is worth noting that in encounters reported by the Indian media, rarely are members of the security forceskilled or even injured. Amnesty International has recorded that in 1990 alone encounters were responsible for the death 346 Sikhs and 25 police officers.

Lack of Effective Response

Although the Indian government consistently claims to take effectivemeasures against the crimes perpetrated by its officers, there is very littleevidence to suggest this. At every opportunity the government, and itsrepresentatives abroad, have dismisse d allegations as mis-leading ,exaggerated, or simply lies. It rarely gives any evidence to support theseclaims, possibly relying on the fact that as a government its word could orshould not be false.

A major cause of the persistence of widespread torture in India is thefailure or unwillingness of leading government officials and representatives toacknowledge that torture even exits, let alone that it needs to be vigorouslytackled. The government maintains this position despite the fact that judges,journalists, expert commentators, police officers themselves, and officialcommissions have attested to its widespread occurrence.