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Magazine
Redefining brutality
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The Vittukkatti incident not only brings to the fore the primitive state of investigative methods, but also the dehumanisation of policemen and unconcern for the human rights of those belonging to depressed sections in society. MYTHILY SIVARAMAN comments.
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WHEN does police brutality become plain torture? This might seem a purely academic question in India, a country that is yet to ratify the 17-year-old UN Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman and Degrading Treatment, though it signed it in 1997. Torture is not specifically defined in the Indian Constitution or prohibited in the country's penal laws. However, the National Human Rights Commission, several eminent persons of the judiciary and human rights academics and activists have consistently called for the ratification of the UN Convention — so far, in vain.
Eminent jurists have bemoaned that it is of no use writing into the constitution that humanism and compassion are fundamental duties while the State remains indifferent to the prevalence of torture. The net result of the Government's diffidence to give human rights a genuine try has meant that police stations, lock-up rooms and jails have often been running as torture chambers.
Such an instance in Tamil Nadu has now been brought to the attention of the State Human Rights Commission, the All India Democratic women's Association (AIDWA) and some other NGOs. A gruesome murder of a woman, her daughter and grandchild took place at Vittukkatti, a village in Thiruvarur district, Tamil Nadu, in May this year, as a result of which the police detained six young men and two women for a number of days, ostensibly for interrogation.
The men and women narrated to AIDWA the torture they were subjected to, while in custody. The male suspects deposed that they were detained for six days in a police station in a remote area — named by the victims as torture chamber -— and subjected to not merely the known brutalities of the "interrogating officers" like severe beatings with lathis, but to also obscenities of the vilest nature.
The men stated they were stripped naked on day one and remained so till they were let off. The routine questioning took the form of any of the following, depending on the officer's dark moods: making the men pretend to sit and rise from a low chair and to sit on their heels as long as it took them to faint; being made to run without a pause, reviving a person who had fainted through a resounding slap on cheek that left at least one of the detainees deaf and showering lathi blows on their groins.
For the khaki-clad, the interrogation, apparently, had to be without a dull moment. When one of the men, gaining consciousness, feebly asked for water, he was told to open his mouth only to find hot urine pour all over his face; all of them met with the same treatment. Another response was to bring a mug of water, soak the policeman's booted feet in it and then pour it down their parched throats.
The detainees were loathe to describe certain other atrocities involving sexual perversities like forced oral sex, while the uniformed men cracked jokes and laughed uproariously. The young men said they were spared only two forms of torture — electric shock and suspension from the ceiling.
The two women were brought to the police station at night, in flagrant violation of rules. One of them, a young woman, whose husband had gone to Kerala looking for work, was brought with her baby. The interrogation here took the form of charging the woman with loose behaviour, especially with one of the men already detained.
This was supposedly the evidence for her complicity in the murder. And this was mentioned to the woman's in-laws, to alienate them from her so she would be defenceless. The husband, who came back after hearing of the arrests, refused to have anything to do with his wife for a time, believing the police canard.
In the lock-up, the two women were asked to stand with their arms around a pillar — with the baby dangling precariously from the mother's hip — while they were beaten. The other older woman detained was constantly threatened that her teenaged daughter would also be brought in for interrogation.
The torture ended only when the real murderer was identified and the stolen goods were seized from elsewhere. Even so, these men were forced to stay at the police station for two more days.
There is also a caste angle to the Vittukkatti episode. All the six men interrogated are Dalits. When asked to identify their caste, the men had given the sub-caste names. They were beaten up, they said, and were forced to say the singular form of the words to humiliate them.
This incident brings to the fore not merely the all-too primitive state of police investigative methods in this day and age, but also the dehumanisation of the men in uniform and total unconcern for the human rights of persons belonging to depressed sections in society.
As a report of Amnesty on Indian conditions, January 2001, noted: "In many areas of India beatings are not reported as torture or ill-treatment because they are so much a part of the arrest and detention process. ...Corruption and extortion, lack of investigative expertise, a confession-oriented approach to interrogation, demands for instant punishment in the context of a crippled criminal justice system, the belief that punitive action will not be taken against torturers and discriminatory attitudes are all reasons why torture and ill-treatment by law enforcement officials abound. Discriminatory attitudes amongst law enforcement officials continue to mean that the most socially and economically vulnerable members of society are particularly vulnerable to torture and ill-treatment."
The responsibility for what happened at Vittukkatti rests not with just a section of the uniformed forces, but on the real power structure in society, including the middle classes.
As the Police Reforms Committee points out in its report to the government in October 2000: "A large section of people strongly believe that the police cannot deliver and cannot be effective if it does not use strong-arm methods against the criminals and anti-social elements of society. And these people include India's political class, the bureaucracy, and large sections of the upper and middle class... In their own perception, the policemen feel that they are doing a job. They resort to torture for `professional objectives' — to extract information or confession in order to solve a case."
As Amnesty International points out in a report, this is not only unlawful, but also fundamentally flawed — the use of torture only serves to perpetuate lawlessness rather than combating it.
We must campaign for the Indian Government ratifying the Convention Against Torture and to have torture defined as an offence in the Indian Constitution and statutes.
Not that this in itself would end torture as the latter is embedded deeply in centuries-old classist, casteist and patriarchal socio-economic and cultural structures. But to render the State apparatus transparent is a civilisational task that stares us in the face.
We owe it to the victims of Vittukkatti who have had the extraordinary courage to come out with it all at great personal risk to themselves. This should not be in vain.
The writer is a well known activist and Working President of the All India Democratic Women's Association, Tamil Nadu.
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