India Perfected In Third Degree Torture Techniques
While handling so many secessionist movements for
such a long time, the
Indians state authorities have developed some unique
techniques to torture
the people fighting for freedom from the Indian Union
rule, including the
Kashmiris. Some of these techniques were mentioned
in a recent issue of
India’s Sunday Magazine. Some excerpts from the magazine:
1. The Aeroplane Treatment: About the first thing
that suspected terrorists
or harbourers were put through in the backrooms of
many police stations in
the Punjab in those dark years of terror. Gradually,
in many places, it
replaced intelligent questioning, Security forces
in Kashmir also made wild
use of it. It has caused limbs to be amputated and
even death. The accused
is hung upside down. It starts getting bad as soon
as the blood rushes to
the head. The second stage of torture commences from
here, starting with
the beating of the soles. Even without this, heavily-built
men can withstand
the ‘aeroplane’ treatment only for a few seconds.
Lighter men can put up
with it for not more than ten minutes.
2. The Bombay cuf.: A variant of the aeroplane; method:
The prisoner’s
hands are tied behind his back and a pipe is placed
under his knees. He is
then elevated just above ground level. It is impossible
for anybody to remain
in that position, with the body weight entirely on
the knees, for more than a
few seconds.
3. The Roller Method: Perfected in Kashmir, the prisoner
is forcibly laid on
his back. Then a round pole is rolled over his legs
and body, sometimes
with the tortures standing on either end of it and
rolling it up and down.
Terribly painful, and with long term consequences.
4. Cog Needle: A thin iron rod is inserted through
the umbilicus, tearing the
skin and the muscles, or up the anus damaging the
muscles, or up the arms
damaging the mucus membrane and other parts of the
rectum.
5. Bellary: One of the oldest torture techniques,
and still prevalent. A stick
smeared with red chilli powder or green chilli paste
is thrust into the anus.
6. Electric Shocks in the Ureter:
All the above techniques are applied during investigations
only when state
authorities do not wish to kill the arrested person;
otherwise, the most
preferred technique, as is being practiced in the
occupied Kashmir, is
‘Shoot at Sight’. Consequently, in the last over
seen years, hundreds of
thousands of innocent Kashmiri people have been killed
by the Indian
Security forces. As regards, the total number of
people killed in the
Occupied Kashmir since 1989, the Indian government
estimate is over
15,000 including over 11,000 Indian security personnel.
The AFP and
Reuters Puts the total number of deaths in the same
period at over 20,000,
while the All Parties Hurriyat Conference and Farooq
Abdullah put this
number at 50,000.
About the techniques of torture, the Sunday magazine
further writes: "Police
officers will tell you that the worst torture scenes
in Hindi cinemas are
nowhere near to the horror of the real thing. Slapping
and Kicking and
caning are the more easily portrayable forms of gratuitous
police violence.
Less shown, are the horrors beginning with hanging
a prisoner upside
down, pulling, his fingernails out, setting fire
to his paraffin-coated legs, or
giving him electric shocks.
Doctors at the Soura Institute of Medical Sciences
(SIMS) in Srinagar have
discovered a condition from treating thousands of
torture victims that they
call ‘physical Torture Nephropathy.’ It is a renal
failure set off by a
combination of dehydration and breakdown of soft
issues during torture.
One hundred and fifty such cases are registered with
SIMS just now. The
case-sheet of all these patients reveal they were
beaten on the buttocks,
back and limbs and given the ‘roller’ treatment along
with electric shocks.
Doctors at the Soura Institute say that undiagnosed
cases of mild renal
failure are being treated outside Soura at other
hospitals and their number
runs into thousands."
Back in the 1980s, the Indian state authorities had
crushed a popular
uprising in the East Punjab with the help of a similar
process of killing and
torture, for which the then police chief KPS Gill
won the due notoriety. On
India human rights violations in the Occupied Kashmir,
Amnesty
International writes that torture by security forces
is a daily routine and so
brutal that hundreds have died so far, Amnesty warns
that "the entire civilian
population is at risk. Torture includes beatings
and electric shocks, hanging
people upside down for many hours, crushing their
legs with heavy rollers,
and burning parts of their bodies".
In a recent issue of the prestigious international
magazine, The Bulletin of
the Atomic Scientists, Surinder Singh Oberoi who
has covered the
Occupied Kashmir happenings for AFP for the last
over seven years, writes
about the reason why Indian state authorities would
like to continue their
gory campaign of torture and killing in Occupied
Kashmir. "For India,
relenting on the question of Kashmir independence
would invite dissent
from other Indian states who are watching developments
in Kashmir. There
is already unrest in the northeastern states and
Punjab; Indian would not
dare to stir up more trouble in these regions, and
hence will always try to
linger on the Kashmir issue on one pretext or another."
In the same article, titled Kashmir is Bleeding,
Oberoi narrated a personal
incident, indicating yet another form of Indian brutality:
the state-sponsoring
of a counter-insurgency movement in occupied Kashmir.
He writes "Last
July, I was one of the 19 Journalists traveling in
a chartered bus to a press
conference in Southern Kashmir. At Anantnag, about
45 miles south of the
Kashmiri capital of Srinagar, we were stopped by
dozen Kashmiri youths
armed with AK-57s. They ordered the by driver to
follow them, and at
gunpoint we were guided to a private home. Once inside,
we realised we
were guests of the jamu and Kashmir Kkhwan (Brotherhood),
a
counter-insurgent group founded by Indian security.
Our captors
complained that the local press who they said was
sympathetic to the
separatists’ cause-had ignored their orders to stop
publishing. They told us
that all coverage of the insurgency must stop. Six
local newsmen were
moved to another part of the house and threatened
with executionl The rest
of us, all members of the national and international
press, remained
together.
The tale goes on to explain the extent to which the
Indian state authorities
have gone to crush a popular uprising with the use
of arms, by launching
counter-insurgents and through using the various
techniques of torture. The
widely held perception among state authorities is
that, as it had happened in
the Punjab, the uprising in occupied Cashmere might
eventually come to an
end as a result of the Indian state’s terror tactics.
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