Preventing torture in

India:
from public awareness
to state accountability
( A project supported by the FNF and the

EIDHR of the European Commission )

• A unique project : highlights
 9 states covered with 47 districts ;
 110 total staff members which
include 9 state directors, 9 state
lawyers, 59 district human rights
monitors ;
 Included activities like :
monitoring cases of torture (6063);
legal interventions (1077) in
certain cases ( 2261) monitored;
awareness training programs for
different categories of people
capacity –teachers, police personnel,
civil society activists, lawyers,
doctors, psychologists and
psychiatrists, political parties and
trade unions, and functionaries of the
criminal justice administration
system (15,000);
Victims meetings, district levels
protests and district level advocacy
with government officials;
 Heightened resolve among several
victims to challenge what has
happened to them so that the same
does not take place to others in
society ;
 Model taluk program to attempt to
reduce incidence of torture with
heightened awareness levels in a
given geographical area;
Creation of a National campaign
Against Impunity in India to fight
torture and impunity;
National Consultation resulting
in the principles to be
incorporated in a domestic
legislation on torture in India;
An effort at initiating local
writings insisting on ‘no to
torture’ in the regional language;
Meetings with Parliamentarians
and senior functionaries of
different political parties to call
upon the Government to
immediately ratify the UN-CAT
and also bring out a domestic
law on torture in India;
Nine State Peoples’ Tribunals
on Torture in India hearing 682
cases in all and culminating with
a National Peoples’ Tribunal on
Torture hearing 21` cases ;
• The outcome has been the following :
 Now acknowledged that on the basis of the
intimations of torture received in the 47 states of
the project, if this was extended to 620 districts
of the country the prevalence of torture, ill
treatment and inhuman behaviour works up to a
shocking figure of 1.8 million cases per year;
 Public acknowledgement that it is not only
torture that is prevalent but it is coupled and
strengthened due to a systemic impunity in the
country - in spite of India being a democracy,
its belief in the Rule of Law, its Constitutional
ban on torture, an independent judiciary and the
creation of a whole array of national and state
human rights institutions, numbering over 130
in all, in the country.
 There is very urgent need to ensure that
human rights institutions, courts &
authorities of the government resolve to
respond & respond qualitatively if they
wish to address the issue urgently.

 A heightened level of press coverage on

the issue, both at the state & national
level after the cases have been show-
cased in the state & national tribunals;
• The main findings resulting from the
cases undertaken by us in the fact
finding and legal interventions:

 Majority of victims/survivors were

from marginalized groups- Dalits or
tribals, poor, from religious
minorities, & many displayed some
combination of the above
characteristics.
 The torture cases reflected the
casteist, classist, and communal
biases of the police service;
 Such biases either reflect or are exploited by
the rich and powerful, who increasingly use the
police as a tool to serve their own interests.
 Gradually breaking the Culture of Silence as a
result of our legal and other interventions;
 Torture is no longer a method of extracting
confession when it is used invariably &
uniformly on a large scale. It is an expression of
a culture of oppression & an instrument of state
power;
 Forms of torture :
• Inhuman and degrading treatment. Such treatment
often precedes torture. Some examples included:
 Being blindfolded;
 Being stripped naked, often in full view of police and
persons of the opposite sex;
 Being forced to torture other members of their families
(e.g., mothers were forced to give shock treatments to
their sons and vice versa);
 Being subjected to verbal abuse;
 Being subjected to sexual abuse (particularly of
female victims);
 Being provided with limited or no meals;
 Not being allowed to wash themselves or change their
clothes; and
 Being deprived of water and other basic necessities.
• Physical torture. Though the treatment meted out
by JSTF personnel was amongst the most heinous,
many victims in many cases were subjected to
physical abuse that constitutes torture. Examples
included:
 administering electric shocks to various parts of the body
(including earlobes, nose, neck, breasts, and genitals);
 tying victims to a wheel or hanging them from a hook to
be beaten and kicked;
 indiscriminate beating on fingers, toes, feet and the whole
of the body using batons, butts of rifles, and clubs; and
 slitting parts of body and filling the slits with chilli pepper.
• Sexual violence. Such forms of torture were
particularly prevalent at JSTF camps:
– both women and men were electrically shocked on
their genitals;
– female victims particularly were subjected to a range
of sexual abuse and violence, including brutal,
repeated and mass rape by the JSTF, as well as
touching, fondling, and verbal sexual abuse;
– sexual torture was clearly used as an act of power,
and an instrument of repression of victims and their
families; and
– the threat of sexual abuse was frequently used to
silence victims and their families.
• Mental torture. Being continuously subjected to
pressure to admit to having done things that one did
not do, or being criminally associated or liable when
one is not, is in itself a form of torture. Suspicion of
being a criminal or a criminal sympathizer, solely
because one is from the same caste as a criminal, is
a lifelong source of mental torture. The jury also
heard many examples of more acute mental torture,
including:

 during their detention, when one victim was taken in

for interrogation, others waiting out knew that (s)he
would be tortured and could hear the screams of the
victim being tortured – so while one victim was being
subjected to physical torture, the rest of them were
subjected to mental torture;
 certain events in JSTF workshops,
such as the sound of a vehicle driving
into the workshop, or the arrival of
certain officers, were dreaded signs
that torture would now begin;
 many victims were threatened with
dire consequences to their families;
 many victims knew that their families
were unaware of their location or
treatment for long periods of time; and
 many victims were not allowed to visit
their detained family members.
 Sexual Assault Perpetrated Against Male
Victims ;
 Lasting Fear of Police Interactions;
 Procedures and Police Powers: Non-
Accountability, Subversion of Law, &
Destruction of Evidence;
 DK Basu Guidelines of the Supreme Court on
norms of arrest flouted in all parts of the
country ;
 Changes in enactments relating to custodial
deaths not followed uniformly throughout the
 Guidelines brought out and to be followed in
Extrajudicial Killings and Encounter Deaths uniformly
not followed throughout the country;
 The urgent need for the concept of command and
superior responsibility, which places the onus on
superiors to ensure compliance of subordinates with
standards of human rights;
 Need to make Reparation and Compensation effective
and meaningful to victims of torture;
 Urgent need for victim and witness protection programs
in the country;
 Almost non performance of human rights institutions in
complaints of torture preferred to them by an on behalf
of victims ;
 The main finding (Contd…)
 Complicity or negligence of medical personnel;
 The Social, Psychological and Economic
Consequences of Torture;
 Disregard for Mandatory Police Procedures;
 Police Torture of Women - that sexual violence
often amounting to rape frequently
accompanies other forms of torture ; women
subjected to utter humiliation by the use of
gender-specific abuse;
 Protecting Juvenile Victims;
• Human Rights Defenders under the project
put to a lot of difficulties including registering
of false cases, arrests, threats, searches
• Project came to an end on 31st Dec’ 2008 ; no
follow up possible under the project although
there are over 2300 cases to be followed up;
• People’s Watch is now supporting the initiative
in all the states to ensure that all these cases
are continuously followed up in the states
before authorities, courts and statutory
commissions.
• We are happy to note that the staff of
the project also participated in the first
Universal Periodic Review of India
before the Human Rights Council in
May 2008. Mr. Kirity Roy – representing
MASUM and Mr. Mathews Philip –
representing SICHREM were physically
present in Geneva for the same. Many
States intervened as a result of the
lobbying undertaken by them and
others in the team to pressurize the
GOI to immediately ratify the UN CAT.
• The Government of India has now come
up with a Bill titled, ‘ Prevention of
Torture Bill 2008’. It is yet to be made
officially public. The ingredients of this
legislation are :
• public servants and others
responsible for causing grievous hurt
or danger to life, limb or health of any
person would be liable for being
punished for torture. Incidentally, the
draft legislation also makes inflicting
mental torture a punishable offence.
• Includes torture by Government
servants, including police officials,
within the ambit of punishable offences.
• Public servants torturing anybody for
the purpose of extracting info or extra-
judicial confession from any accused
would also attract penal action under
the proposed law.
• Torturing anybody on the ground of his
race, religion, place of birth, residence,
language, caste & community would
also be a punishable offence.
• Setting up independent panels to deal with
complaints of torture, both at the central
level as well as the state level. All complaints
on torture would be forwarded to these
panels.
• Officers, individuals involved in physical or
mental torture would be liable for maximum
punishment up to 10 years
• Public servants torturing anybody for
extracting info or extra-judicial confession
from any accused would also attract penal
action under the proposed law
• Torturing anybody on the ground of his race,
religion, place of birth, residence, language,
caste and community would also be a
punishable offence