September 18, 2007	Tuesday	Ramazan 05, 1428

RAWALPINDI, Sept 17: Brutality in police culture is so deeply ingrained it appears no injection of reforms will ever be able to civilise the keepers of law. In a matter of just eight months since January 39 case of torture have been documented against the Rawalpindi police. Four of these unfortunate victims are no more in this world to tell what happened to them.

Torture is routine practice at all places of detention to extract confessions. It makes the process of inquiry easy and as long as judges and magistrates admitted confessions made under torture the practice was not going to go.

The case report compiled by Dawn which is based on medical autopsy results, testimonies and interviews with victims and doctors shows that the practice of torture is widespread in Rawalpindi. Law seems unable to bring the culprits to book. The savagery goes on unchecked. Hardly any of the perpetrators is punished.

Most of the victims were arrested in campaigns against common crime and were tortured to obtain confessions. They were tortured in local police stations, often in interrogation rooms and sometimes taken to undisclosed places. In the rare instances when the victims have stood up and sought recourse to legal defence they have faced harassment, intimidation and obstruction by the police through such common tactics as bringing cooked up charges against relatives and locking up sympathisers.

According to some testimonies, lawyers are not allowed during questioning of suspects in detention, relatives are not informed about their detention, and in the jail convicts do the torturing on behalf of jail authorities. There is no independent mechanism to investigate such abuses and it has created a serious accountability vacuum in which torture methods flourish.

During January to August 2007, the victims of police torture were brought to hospital from centres of detention in Kahuta, Gujar Khan, Taxila, R.A Bazaar, Anti-Narcotics Force, Civil Lines, Saddar Beruni, Airport, Waris Khan, Wah Cantt, National Accountability Bureau, Banni, Ganjmandi and even from Adiala jail where complaints of torture were common.

A senior doctor who had often been a member of medical boards and had carried out medical examinations of several victims of police torture told this correspondent that the most common methods of torture included “flogging with whips, beating with batons and machetes and caning the soles of the feet, inserting rods in sensitive parts, squeezing of testis. Mental torture was inflicted by denying food, water and medical treatment,” the doctor said. He said that squeezing of testis could cause immediate death. It is common to tie up the suspects’ hands and feet behind his back to make him helpless against beating which is inflicted with different objects.

Qayyum Khan, 34, a resident of Ganjmandi, alleged to be the latest victim of ‘police torture’ who died as a result. Postmortem report on Qayyum’s body also suggested that he had been tortured and had died of ‘rupture in liver’. Police claim he had already been suffering from cancer due to drinking.

When the Senior Superintendent of Police, Yasin Farooq, was asked had any police officer been prosecuted for committing torture in the recent past, he replied: “We always discourage torture and take strict action against those who commit torture. Whenever such cases are brought to our notice we punish those responsible and there is an example of Qayyum’s case in which the guilty policemen were booked.”

Gul Seera Bibi arrested by the women police on February 2 this year was found dead in the police station. Later the police claimed that she had committed suicide but her family alleged that she was tortured to death in custody.

Mohammad Hafeez, an under-trial prisoner of the Sadiqabad police, who had been languishing in Adiala jail, died on May 17 after being brought to hospital in critical condition. His family accused the jail authorities of torturing him to death.

Abdul Jabbar, a resident of Faisalabad was another victim of alleged police torture who died in the custody of the Murree police on July 3.

Omer Ali, a resident of Rahimabad, the latest victim, was picked up by the Airport police along with his two other relatives on August 15 in connection with a murder case although he had not been identified in the FIR nor was suspected by the victim’s family. He with two other relatives was released after five days.

Again Omer Ali was called to the police station on August 22 but this time he was tortured and mistreated as described by his cousin Qasir Ali who went to the police station on the following day and was shocked to see bruises on Omer’s face. “He was beyond recognition as there were bruises and swelling on Omer’s face. When I asked him what had happened to him, he started sobbing,” Qasir Ali said. He said on seeing Omer’s condition, he filed a complaint with the Supreme Court. Following the court’s order the CPO, Rawalpindi, ordered an inquiry which found the police guilty.

“In revenge, the guilty cop instead of releasing Omer Ali, implicated and booked him in the murder case and sought his physical remand from the court,” said Qasir Ali.

Chairman Public Safety Commission Jameel Mufti told this correspondent that they receive petitions every day from people who are abused in police detention and send their ‘fact finding’ report to the City Police Officer (CPO) who is bound to take action on it within 48 hours.

However police maintain that allegations of widespread torture were not true because the number of complaints about torture and illegal detention had dropped since policemen involved in such practices had been punished.