June 26, 2007	Tuesday	Jamadi-us-Sani 10, 1428

PESHAWAR, June 25: With the International Day in Support of Victims of Torture to be observed across the world on Tuesday, torture by the law-enforcement agencies is still an accepted norm in Pakistan, despite the laws prohibiting it.

Legal experts say it is a known fact that accused people are tortured in custody for extracting information and confession and the practice is also in the knowledge of courts.

Although Pakistan has yet to ratify the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment of 1986, there are various laws prohibiting torture.

Apart from the police, other law-enforcement and intelligence agencies had also been involved in torturing people in their custody, said some lawyers.

They said that, especially, there was no check on the intelligence agencies in this regard.

“Due to lack of awareness, torture victims rarely move the courts against the police officials concerned,” said Advocate Noor Alam Khan, chairman of the Voice of Prisoners.

He said that as police had not been trained to investigate cases through advanced and scientific methods, torturing a suspect was the easy option with them for extracting evidence.

Article 14(2) of the Constitution states: “No person shall be subjected to torture for the purpose of extracting evidence.”

Mr Khan said Section 337-K of the Pakistan Penal Code dealt with causing harm to extort confession or recover property. He said a person convicted under the section was punishable to up to 10-year imprisonment.

“Our officials mostly believe that interrogating hardened criminals without torturing them is next to impossible,” said a police official. He admitted that they lacked modern ways of investigation, due to which they depended on torture.

A medical check-up of an accused is conducted before getting his custody from a court and after completion of the remand with police.

In most cases, the victims are hit on those parts of their bodies which are not visible to the judicial officers when they are produced in courts.

Mr Khan said that, in certain cases, police pressured the victims to withdraw their complaints of torture.

The United Nations convention defines torture as: “Any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity.”