Torture of innocent accused of terrorism in Indian jails

Much of the concern of the common people is about the torture the innocent accused is subjected through. That is exacerbated by the letters the accused write from their jail. Fahim Ansari accused in 26/11 and Noorulhoda accused in Malegaon 2006 blasts have given description of their ordeal including cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment. That is against the UNO convention against torture. The torture also comes out when the members of the family of the accused pay visit or have phone conversation with their inmates. In the case of the innocent accused in bomb blasts the feeling is acute. Communication in such cases is almost nil in the initial period of arrest. Muzammil Akhtar was arrested in 2003 in local train blasts case in Mumbai and until he was brought to court he did not know why he was arrested. He is now in the twelfth year of imprisonment. When his father went to see him in May 2003 even his father was detained and put in prison cell at the Crawford Market police station in Mumbai. The torture he went through was most excruciating when his father was undressed and he was told that the same will be the fate of his mother if he did not confess. He was so overwhelmed that he simply put his signature on the blank paper shoved before him to sign. For nearly 12 years in Thane Central Jail there has been no visit by any independent body, either the Red Cross or the Human Rights Commissions either state or national. This is against the first protocol of the Conventions against Torture of UNO. Article 1 of the general principles says: The objective of the present Protocol is to establish a system of regular visits undertaken by independent international and national bodies to places where people are deprived of their liberty, in order to prevent torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. [1]The same was true of Fahim and Qateel Siddiquy, Shakeel Ahmad (Delhi). Shakeel was arrested in 1996 and for 14 years there was no fact finding visit and the world knew nothing of how he was treated. This produces utter dependence of the innocent accused at the mercy of the state. The more absolute is the dependency the worse is the torture. Protection of the citizens from custodial abuse is the moral and legal duty of the state where democracy is in practice. However, what is happening in Indian prison is unspeakable barbarity. For example after inhuman beating of Faheem the police blindfolded him and ordered him to run for his life. His senses told him that he would be killed in fake encounter and burst out weeping loudly and begged for their mercy in the darkness of the night in a lonely field where the police had taken him for torture. His letter from his cell is graphic about it. As Nitya Ramakrishnan writer of In Custody: Law, Impunity and Prisoner Abuse in South Asia remarks about why the protection from judicial abuse is important: “Because I think it is the quintessential exposition of power. The notion of freedom is accountability for restrictions of that freedom. No power is more absolute than that being held over a person in custody. You have no access to anything in a custodial cell, and over there if you can ensure accountability, then I would assume that your system is working.”[2] What has gone wrong in India in matters of torture is that though India signed the convention it has turned blind eye on it even when the matter involved a minister like Haren Pandya and a suspect chief minister Narendra Modi. Article 21 of the convention spells out the matter: 1. No authority or official shall order, apply, permit or tolerate any sanction against any person or organization for having communicated to the national preventive mechanism any information, whether true or false, and no such person or organization shall be otherwise prejudiced in any way. Pandya was tortured and killed because he went to the People’s Tribunal and revealed how Modi had allowed Hindus to vent their anger in the three days of February28, 2002 to March 2. Pandya’s torture included his testicle shot at by gun of the torturer believed to be Tulsiram Prajapati. This was gravest matter as 11 innocent people had suffered long term imprisonment and tortured including the leading accused Asghar Ali. Had India taken care of national preventive mechanism against torture the case would have been resolved long back! Not ratifying the protocol does not mean that police or private individuals of India enjoy immunity according to our national laws. Conscious of this Noorulhoda writes from jail: “New methods of torture: The police in Malegaon use the thick and hard belt that moves the electric motor and powerloom and hit at the palm, soles, back, private parts, etc. As a consequence the prisoners including him could not sit or sleep. The ATS also has a particular machine by which electric current shock is given to the body of the victim. There are two wire strands which are tied to the ears or big toes of the feet and then current is turned on which gives traumatic shock to the prisoner. Sometimes the police go beyond all humanity and use the same method on the sex organ. “In another method the police tie the arms and feet of the accused on their back and then the police man stands between the arms of the accused and they are stretched straight and they do the same to legs. As the accused has his arms and legs tied the torture produces maximum pain. Sometimes the stretching of the limbs is more than 180 degrees. The accused screams with pain very loudly. But as it is sound proof room the sound does not go out. The result is that he urinates blood for some days. “Another method: sometimes a gas is leaked to the masked accused. It leads to the swelling of the body parts. Then the police press any part of the body of the victim who shrieks with pain. Then particular oil called SuryaPrakash Oil is dropped into his nostrils which produces acute burning pain for hours together. Sometimes the oil is injected through the penis which produces spasmodic shivering or violent convulsion of the body on the floor. “Malegaon blasts accused were subjected to all these methods of torture and then they were told that if they do not confess their family members would also be brought and subjected through the same torture.” Noorulhoda had sent this note in his own handwriting from the prison a year after the blasts of 2006. [3,see facsimile ] Fahim was not only tortured till he was acquitted in 26/11 case but was returned to the detention in the Rampur attack on CRPF camp. All these happened because no national prevention mechanism is in place. In his own words he describes some of the torture. (1) There is a torture cell in prison. The police use such filthy abuses against the prisoners’ mother, sister, wife, etc in such volume that causes mental distress. (2) If he does not confess after physical and mental torture then they take him out in the open with eyes covered with cloth and force him to run masquerading it as a fake encounter to frighten him into confession. (3) The police beat the accused with grinding stone belt used in the flour mill. They rain blows with it and also with baton on the head, soles, arms and back. If the victim passes out they revive him to consciousness, if he sleeps they awaken him. They did not let him sleep for full 5 days and nights continuously. When extreme exhaustion made the eye lips close and the victim dozes off they make him stand up and walk. (4)They removed all my clothes and then tied black piece of cloth on my eyes and made me lie on a table. They tied both of my hands and feet and applied current to the lobs of my ears and performed the same on the nipples of my chest and my penis through Hoydoseen wire. Blood started oozing through my penis.[4] Of numerous officers of police who practice torture is the present commissioner of police Rakesh Maria. He was much junior in 1993 when serendipity led to the arrest of a man and that is how he discovered the trace of the serial bomb blasts in Bombay. This made him a hero known for his braggadocio. Thanks to the self interested ministers they let him rise and rise in office. He was also known for his anti minority stance being of Jewish descent. In fact Adriann levy and Cathy Scott-Clark say that he was so impetuous that he would have killed Ajmal Kasab[5]. He was known for his torture of the minority prisoners so much so that in Black Friday Kay Kay Menon made him celebrated for torturing Muslim accused. But a Muslim youth writing a letter from prison, Muzammil Akhtar has this to say: “I would like to further clarity that, on-record investigating officer of the 3 cases are different, but the cases were investigated by Shri Rakesh Maria, now the ATS Chief of the ATS of Maharashtra. That Shri Rakesh Maria and other persons connected with the investigation of the cases are very influential and resourceful in Maharashtra Govt and secretariat. These people may thwart the reinvestigation of case to save [hide] their own misdeeds.” [6]. Muzammil was accused in the Mulund train blast which Maria investigated along with the Ghatkoper bus blast case in which all other accused are acquitted. Another case known as Aurangabad arms haul is on the verge of collapse in the trial court. Its source is traced to Maharashtra MLA hostel in Mumbai, a ‘province’ of Maria where so called Abu Jundal or Zabiuddin Ansari started his journey on a Sumo Tata used in carrying arms to Aurangabad, Malegaon and Ankai near Manmad. Such is the bogus nature of the case that on July 26, 2007 four deputy commissioners of police who arrested the accused failed to identify the persons they had accused of gunrunning. A fifth DCP refused to identify because that had happened in the ancient time of May 2006![7] The logical inference is that the so called proof was cooked up by the ATS. The accused were made scapegoat for the crimes which others had committed. All the confessions verbally the same by five DCP had the drama scripted beforehand. Torture can be full of so much animality in it that Khwaja Yunus accused in December 2, 2002 died of vomiting blood. Another accused Dr Mateen Ansari had seen and heard the cries and gave his medical counsel that he would not survive. ATS officer Sachin Vaze disposed of the body on the false pretext that he escaped when the van overturned on the way to Aurangabad! This case too was practically handled by Maria although name of another officer is on the paper. In the matter of arresting Ajmal Kasab, Maria was so much angered that he thundered his assistants: “Bring him here even if you have to put a fucking gun against the doctor’s head.” [8]When Kasab was discharged so peremptorily at the behest of Maria and against the order of commissioner of police Hasan Gafoor the doctor wrote in the patient record note on Kasab “Discharged against the medical advice.” However the inspector who took the discharge warned Maria only to hear the retort “This is no time for the fucking Geneva Conventions.” Another instance of the same animal nature of Maria: “My heart is telling me I should strangle this guy, here and now.” All the assistants of Maria there proposed two sources of torture, one, let Kasab run so a bullet would reach him and finish him, two, hang him in the prison and make it look suicide. These are tried and tested methods of torture as proven by the murder of Mohammad Shakeel of Delhi in another case. Maria showed his blunt knuckles to Kasab when he told him that he would prevent him from death so that he would not become a martyr and go to heaven. Kasab was finally hanged and where he went no one knows. However the perplexities continue like why Maria was itching to undertake operational duty of taking control of Kasab when he was stationed at the Control Room to do coordination in which he behaved suspiciously for why should he direct Ashok Kamte and Karkare to go to him while Gafoor had required them elsewhere. Why Maria did not send reinforcement when he was sitting in the Control Room just on the back of the lane where the action was taking place. For forty minutes the three injured officers lay on the lane of Rangbhavan while three police vans passed them and no notice was taken! The FBI can visit our prisons and abduct Anita Uddaiya to the US to verify that six landed at Cuffe Parade while ten were killed in 26/11. But surprisingly except FBI no national prevention of cruelty mechanism was even remotely considered though Kasab was in prison for several years. One of the innocent accused having spent 12 years in prison had his hand bone broken even when he was innocent and had nothing to do with the Akshardham temple attack. Why this inconsistency? Is the US more important than the indigenous people? [1]http://www.ohchr.org/en/ProfessionalInterest/Pages/OPCAT.aspx Optional Protocol to the Convention against Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment Adopted on 18 December 2002 [2] [ http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/interview/torture-is-a-public-secret-expose-the-hypocrisy/article5097338.ece#.UimXwmejJSU.gmail [3] facsimile [4] Urdu Times, March 8, 2010 [5] Adrian Levy and Cathy-Scott Clark, The Siege: the attack on Taj Mahal Hotel Penguin India 2013 p.232 [6] Letter to Member of Parliament Shri Mohammad Adeeb [7] Asian Age, July 27, 2014 [8] op cit.