A long process of reorientation will be needed before the Pakistani police can learn to recognise the person in their custody as a fellow human whose dignity is inviolable. –File Photo

(1) The dignity of man and, subject to law, the privacy of home, shall be inviolable.
(2) No person shall be subjected to torture for the purpose of extracting evidence.
— (Article 14, Constitution of Pakistan)

Last week a very large number of people in Pakistan discovered that the way some police officials thrashed a few men in their custody with leather straps (chhittar) was absolutely unconscionable.

The wave of shock and revulsion unleashed by the TV coverage of bestiality was due to the fact that millions of people who have had nothing to do with criminals and the legal system were able to see acts of brutality in graphic detail.

In many cases the display of outrage smacked of hypocrisy, for the entire police force, the judiciary, the legal community and a large part of the citizenry knows that chhitrol is the most common method used by the police to extract evidence, to break a habitual offender, or to give a detainee an idea of the power the police has over him — this despite a long history of rejection of attacks on people either as a punishment for any crime or as a means of investigation.

The constitutional guarantee against the violation of any person’s dignity has a unique position in the body of our fundamental rights. As the Sindh High Court once pointed out this is the only right the Pakistani people (citizens of, as well as any person present in, Pakistan) have that is absolute, a right that is not subject to the law.

Accordingly, the judiciary has ruled against the infringement of Article 14 in numerous cases. In one case the use of bar fetters on prisoners was held to be violative of the dignity of an individual. In another case a similar ruling was given against public hanging. Even the charge of subversion against the prime minister while dismissing him vide Article 58 (2) b in 1993 was considered violative of Article 14 (1). Besides, the courts have ordered the registration of hundreds of cases against police officials for subjecting to violence persons in their custody.

And yet no right is more commonly violated in Pakistan than the right to the dignity of the person. According to the UN Rapporteur on Torture, Pakistan figures among the countries where torture is endemic and no domestic observer has ever been able to challenge the verdict.

So widespread indeed has torture in custody been that it has acquired legitimacy in the eyes of a majority of the police force at least and one will not be surprised if it includes a substantial number of senior officers. That should explain the statement made by one of the policemen arrested after the Chiniot incident: “We have been beating up men in custody and we will go on doing so.”

Another defence of torture in custody offered by a police official is that “we beat up criminals, and there can be nothing wrong about that”. Quite obviously the police functionaries are not taught the basic principle of justice that anyone who knows that a person has committed a crime is at best a witness and even if he is a policeman or a judicial authority he cannot assume the function of a judge and start punishing the culprit. Unfortunately, this point is not understood by quite a few police officers and their patrons in political authority who often join hands to liquidate their prey in so-called police encounters.

Quite a few quarters complained that no law took cognisance of torture at the hands of policemen. “The word ‘torture’ does not occur in the Penal Code”, it was said. Such commentators not only betrayed their ignorance, they seemed to be providing the administrators, especially senior police officers, with an excuse for not addressing the pernicious practice. The fact is that the Penal Code has fairly adequate provisions for cases of hurt to the human body regardless of the pretext. The police functionaries are liable to be prosecuted if a victim of torture is hurt (minor or serious or grievous injuries). In the event of death as a result of torture the police official concerned must face a murder charge.

Furthermore, Section 156 (d) of the Police Order 2002 says: “Whoever, being a police officer, inflicts torture or violence to any person in his custody shall, for every such offence, on conviction, be punished with imprisonment, for a term, which may extend to five years and with fine.” One should like to alert all those who are following the efforts of the provincial governments to make new laws to replace the Police Order to keep a watch on any move to do away with this important provision.

Experienced policemen always avoided causing their victims any hurt that could render them liable to prosecution — such as breaking of bones or leaving marks of violence on a victim’s body. That led to the adoption of the leather strap as the instrument of torture in preference to the whip which could cut and tear human skin and leave marks that could be visible for days afterward. However, as tolerance of torture grew and the system failed to introduce non-violent methods of investigating crime, the chhitrol lost its status as the only mode of torture. By now scores of forms of torture, some involving physical hurt and some others causing mental and psychological distress, have been developed.

Looking somewhat embarrassed at the unwelcome exposure they have received police and political bosses both have issued orders that all unlawful methods of investigation should cease. These orders will have little effect because the police cannot give up the only method of investigation they know. They do not have the means to use scientific methods of investigation, nor have they been trained in their use. A fairly long process of training and reorientation will be needed before the police can learn to recognise the person in their custody as a fellow human being whose dignity is inviolable.

Now that Pakistan has signed the UN Convention Against Torture the priority attached to devising new training modules for the law-enforcement personnel is obvious.

In the final analysis, torture may be a central feature of the thana culture it is not confined to the police precincts. Torture has been legitimised in prisons, in schools (especially madressahs) and in communities still in the grip of feudal/patriarchal codes. It is also time to seriously probe the contribution to the culture of torture made by the abuse of belief by armed bandits. An intolerant society can never erase torture in custody.