The As­so­ci­a­tion of Par­ents of Dis­ap­peared Per­sons (APDP) and the Jammu Kash­mir Coali­tion of Civil So­ci­ety (JKCCS) have re­leased the first com­pre­hen­sive re­port on tor­ture in Jammu and Kash­mir, doc­u­ment­ing in­hu­man de­grad­ing mal­treat­ment since the last three decades in the con­flict zone of Jammu and Kash­mir. 

In a con­certed at­tempt to ex­pose the lies of the In­dian state, the APDP and JKCCS -com­pris­ing par­ents of those who dis­ap­peared in­vol­un­tar­ily and hu­man rights ac­tivists have pre­pared the first of its kind com­pre­hen­sive re­port of the use of tor­ture as a weapon of war by the In­dian state se­cu­rity agen­cies in Jammu and Kash­mir.  The team calls for an in­ter­na­tional in­ves­ti­ga­tion on tor­ture in Kash­mir, led by the UN Of­fice of the High Com­mis­sioner for Hu­man Rights, be­sides urg­ing In­dia to rat­ify the UN Con­ven­tion Against Tor­ture and com­pletely end tor­ture in all its forms.

Whet­her it is an In­dian fo­rum or an in­ter­na­tional meet on Tor­ture, In­dia, de­spite over­whelm­ing ev­i­dence to the con­trary, has al­ways de­nied the ex­is­tence of tor­ture in In­dia.

The ex­haus­tive 550 pages re­port en­ti­tled Tor­ture -In­dian State’s In­stru­ment of Con­trol in In­dian-ad­min­is­tered Jammu and Kash­mir gives de­tails of as many as 432 case stud­ies of tor­ture since 1990 and pro­vides a con­text of the use of tor­ture in so fla­grant a man­ner, chart­ing out the trends and pat­terns, tar­gets, per­pe­tra­tors, sites, con­texts and im­pacts of tor­ture in the dis­puted ter­ri­tory of Jammu and Kash­mir.

The re­port laments that “Due to le­gal, po­lit­i­cal and moral im­punity ex­tended to the armed forces, not a sin­gle pros­e­cu­tion has taken place in any case of hu­man rights vi­o­la­tions in Jammu and Kash­mir.”

“Due to le­gal, po­lit­i­cal and moral im­punity ex­tended to the armed forces, not a sin­gle pros­e­cu­tion has taken place in any case of hu­man rights vi­o­la­tions in Jammu and Kash­mir.”

Pro­vid­ing an in­ter­na­tional di­men­sion and ru­ing the fact that the in­ter­na­tional com­mu­nity has main­tained a stud­ied si­lence on the gross hu­man rights vi­o­la­tions in Kash­mir, the re­port reads, “De­spite global at­ten­tion and con­dem­na­tion of tor­ture fol­low­ing ex­posés of in­dis­crim­i­nate tor­ture prac­tised in Guan­tanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib pris­ons, tor­ture re­mains hid­den in Jammu and Kash­mir, where tens of thou­sands of civil­ians have been sub­jected to it.”

Tor­ture is used as a mat­ter of pol­icy by the In­dian State in Jammu and Kash­mir in a sys­tem­atic and in­sti­tu­tional man­ner, as all the in­sti­tu­tions of the State -leg­is­la­ture, ex­ec­u­tive, ju­di­ciary and armed forces col­lab­o­rate to com­mit this heinous crime.

The re­port cites the ex­am­ple of 29-year old school prin­ci­pal Rizwan Pan­dith who suc­cumbed to tor­ture af­ter il­le­gal de­ten­tion in the Cargo camp of the Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions Group of the Jammu and Kash­mir Po­lice on 19 March 2019.  In an ironic de­vel­op­ment, three days later, the po­lice filed against Rizwan, say­ing, “he was try­ing to es­cape from the Po­lice cus­tody.” How­ever, “no case was filed against Po­lice of­fi­cials un­der whose cus­tody he was killed.”

“De­spite global at­ten­tion and con­dem­na­tion of tor­ture fol­low­ing ex­posés of in­dis­crim­i­nate tor­ture prac­tised in Guan­tanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib pris­ons, tor­ture re­mains hid­den in Jammu and Kash­mir, where tens of thou­sands of civil­ians have been sub­jected to it.”

This re­port gives a brief his­tor­i­cal back­ground of the use of tor­ture in Jammu and Kash­mir since 1947 to curb any dis­sent­ing voices, a prac­tice which at­tained an un­prece­dented mag­ni­tude post-1990. The re­port cat­e­go­rizes the eras af­ter 1990 dur­ing which tor­ture and other hu­man rights vi­o­la­tions, while still be­ing car­ried out by the In­dian armed forces and Jammu & Kash­mir Po­lice, were also out­sourced to dif­fer­ent for­ma­tions like Ikhwan and Vil­lage De­fence Com­mit­tees (VDCs).

This re­port es­tab­lishes that the vast num­ber of meth­ods of tor­ture and other cruel, in­hu­man and de­grad­ing treat­ment or pun­ish­ment, as set out in the UN OHCHR Is­tan­bul Pro­to­col, have been and con­tinue to be per­pe­trated in Jammu and Kash­mir.

The forms of tor­ture that have been doc­u­mented in this re­port in­clude strip­ping the de­tainees naked (190 out of 432 cases stud­ied for this re­port), beat­ing with sticks, iron rods or leather belts (326 cases), roller treat­ment (169 cases), wa­ter-board­ing (24 cases), dunk­ing de­tainees’ head in wa­ter (101 cases), elec­tro­cu­tion in­clud­ing in gen­i­tals (231 cases), hang­ing from the ceil­ing, mostly up­side down (121 cases), burn­ing of the body with hot ob­jects (35 cases), soli­tary con­fine­ment (11 cases), sleep de­pri­va­tion (21 cases), sex­ual tor­ture (238 cases) in­clud­ing rape and sodomy, among oth­ers.

The re­port points out that a pre­dom­i­nant ma­jor­ity of the tor­ture vic­tims are civil­ians: 301 out of 432, which in­clude women, stu­dents and ju­ve­niles, po­lit­i­cal ac­tivists, hu­man rights ac­tivists and jour­nal­ists. En­tire pop­u­la­tions have also been sub­jected to col­lec­tive pun­ish­ments like cor­don and search op­er­a­tions, dur­ing which tor­ture and sex­ual vi­o­lence has been com­mon.

What hap­pens to the vic­tims of tor­ture? The re­port pro­vides an in­sight into how tor­ture has ru­ined the lives of sur­vivors with a mul­ti­tude of them suf­fer­ing from chronic ail­ments re­sult­ing from tor­ture. Apart from the phys­i­cal ail­ments, peo­ple who have been tor­tured or even wit­nessed it, have suf­fered from psy­cho­log­i­cal is­sues like post-trau­matic stress dis­or­der (PTSD). 49 of the 432 vic­tims of tor­ture died post-tor­ture, 40 of them as a re­sult of in­juries re­ceived dur­ing tor­ture.

The re­port has noted that since many deaths due to tor­ture-re­lated in­juries are not im­me­di­ate but may oc­cur af­ter years or even decades, ac­cu­rate fig­ures of such fa­tal­i­ties and mor­bid­ity are ex­tremely hard to es­ti­mate.

Forms of Tor­ture doc­u­mented in the Re­port:
Strip­ping de­tainees naked -190 out of 432 cases
Beat­ing with sticks, iron rods or leather belts -326 cases
Roller treat­ment -169 cases
Wa­ter-board­ing -24 cases
Dunk­ing de­tainees’ head in wa­ter -101 cases
Elec­tro­cu­tion in­clud­ing in gen­i­tals -231 cases
Hang­ing from the ceil­ing, mostly up­side down -121 cases
Burn­ing of the body with hot ob­jects -35 cases
Soli­tary con­fine­ment -11 cases
Sleep de­pri­va­tion -21 cases
Sex­ual tor­ture in­clud­ing rape and sodomy -238 cases.

Tor­ture has been as­so­ci­ated with other hu­man rights vi­o­la­tions like cus­to­dial deaths and en­forced dis­ap­pear­ances. And it is only when a case of tor­ture is ac­com­pa­nied by such hu­man rights vi­o­la­tions that it gets re­ported in the me­dia. As a re­sult, tor­ture has re­mained un­no­ticed and sur­vivors con­tinue to suf­fer in si­lence.

Of­fi­cial im­punity to the armed forces as out­lined by even the Prime Min­is­ter in his state­ment on 15 Feb­ru­ary 2019 em­bold­ens them to con­tinue their bar­baric prac­tice of tor­ture.

Will the world com­mu­nity break its si­lence on tor­ture in Kash­mir?