The illegitimate children of the Republic

Torture has long been employed by well-meaning, even reasonable people armed with the sincere belief that they are preserving civilisation as they know it.

Aristotle favoured the use of torture in extracting evidence, speaking of its absolute credibility, and St Augustine also defended the practice. Torture was routine in ancient Greece and Rome, and although the methods have changed in the intervening centuries, the goals of the torturer — to gain information, to punish, to force an individual to change his beliefs of loyalties, to intimidate a community — have not changed at all.’ — from The Dynamics of Torture, by John Conroy.

The medical report on adivasi teacher Soni Sori’s condition while she was in police custody submitted in the Supreme Court stated that stones were found lodged in her vagina and her rectum.

The Supreme Court had given the Chhattisgarh government 55 days to respond, and sent her back to the Chhattisgarh jails, and revealed once again that the rule of law and the Constitution are divorcing themselves from the aspirations of citizens, whose fundamental right to life has to be protected by the courts, not something the state is allowed to take away the instant she is considered a Maoist sympathiser.

Her hearing was supposed to be held on January 25, but never came up. Instead, Superintendent of Police Ankit Garg, whom she accused of torturing her, won the president’s medal for gallantry on Republic Day for his conduct during an encounter with the Maoists in 2010. Since then, her case has been listed but hasn’t been heard, it being over five months since she was tortured.

To the state machinery, it remains a story of he said-she said, as torture in police custody leaves no witnesses besides the tortured themselves. But in this case, the accused has a medical report from Kolkata to confirm her allegations. Even then, custodial violence is endemic.

The National Human Rights Commission is on record saying that 1,574 custodial deaths took place between April 2010 and March 2011. And between 2001 and 2011, there were around 15,231 custodial deaths, according to the Asian Centre for Human Rights.

The unaccounted and the unaccountable:
Meena Khalko, 16, was killed in an alleged encounter and accused as a Maoist. Allegations surfaced that she was raped and murdered. The Chhattisgarh home minister parroted his police officials, who said she was ‘habitual about sex’ and had links with truck drivers.

The character of Ishrat Jahan, who the SIT confirms was killed in a fake encounter recently, was questioned on the basis that her checking into a hotel room with another man was suspicious.

Of 99 cases of rape allegations against special police officers or security personnel in South Bastar, the NHRC enquiry team, (which has 15 police officials out of 16 members) investigated only five. In one instance, they visited the wrong village and construed that the allegations were baseless as they ‘obviously’ couldn’t find the victims.

In the other village of Potenaar, there were discrepancies in the testimonies of women who were raped three years earlier and there was no FIR filed in the police station, they thus construed again, that the allegations were baseless, as women traumatised brutally by assault have to apparently remember the intricate details of everything that was done to them and lodge a complaint against the same police that rapes them.

In Gadchiroli, Maharashtra, a 12-year-old girl was allegedly raped by the member of the elite anti-Maoist C60 group, in Paverval village on March 4, 2009. The alleged rapist himself claims with strong conviction that it’s all Maoist propaganda mischief. 

In Narayanpatna, Koraput, Orissa, in Taladekapadu village, on April 19, 2011, a 14-year-old girl was allegedly gang-raped by four security personnel, yet without making her medical report public, the crime branch claims the entire allegation is false. The girl’s family belong to the Kondh tribe who have been criminalised in a district that has seen mass arrests, police firings into crowds, mass abductions and tortures, and the burning of villages. To them, the idea of approaching the judicial system itself is oppressive.

And cases like hers are those that never receive the kind of attention that the Soni Sori case has, where a woman stood up for her rights, who approached the media that would listen to her, who repeatedly spoke about the torture faced by her family by both the state and the Maoists, and would yet be condemned by the system, while those who defend human rights watched helplessly.

The State as a bystander
A woman attacked with acid by a man in the middle of a market while a crowd watches can be described akin to Soni Sori being brutally tortured as the judiciary, the mainstream media, the senior police officials, larger civil society and the general public sit quietly.

A group of committed activists, a dissident media and international human rights organisations have been repeatedly attempting to bring her case to the public eye, yet as a matter of fact, have failed to prevent her torture.

The silent consent of the general public plays its role in perpetrating human rights violations. If a woman is being tortured, first its veracity is questioned, then when it is confirmed, she is dehumanised with the tag ‘Naxalite supporter’ so people can continue to be bystanders, and turn the pages over the suffering of a fellow human being. When it comes to rape accusations against the police, the very lackadaisical and haphazard manner of investigation, the complete lack of interest shown in even lodging FIRs, doesn’t entertain any seriousness of the crime and only manifests the complete bias of the police who are convinced that all accusations against their own, is malicious propaganda meant to ‘demoralise’ their ranks.

Bystanders, when there are many of them, will always pass on the responsibility of doing something when there are others in the crowd. Responsibility is diffused. Responsibility is further diffused when the crowd looks around and notices no one is doing anything. And when a police official suspected of torture is awarded by the president of the nation, what kind of message does it give to the police?

The police, however, have been convinced that the Maoists have been using the laws of the land and the courts, to hamper their counterinsurgency efforts. And counterinsurgency is completely incompatible with human rights — what are human rights violations to one are standard operating procedures to those in uniform.

State of Anomie
Psychologist Ervin Staub quotes in The Origins and Prevention of Genocide, Mass Killing, and Other Collective Violence, that ‘Dominant groups usually develop “hierarchy legitimising myths” or legitimising ideologies that justify subordinating other groups. They often see themselves as superior and deserving of their status due to their race, religion, intelligence, hard work, worldview, or other characteristics. Groups also embrace ideologies of development and visions of economic progress, identifying the victim group as standing in the way.’

And Jon Conroy quotes him extensively in The Dynamics of Torture. Staub studied mass human rights violations in Argentina during the military Junta, where “....the Argentine torturers could see that their actions were supported by the larger society. Their superior officers signed release forms for kidnappings, relieving the lower orders from responsibility for the acts they carried out. The judiciary commonly accepted the military’s versions of events. The press — threatened by prison terms for demeaning or subverting the military — largely accepted censorship and did not report on disappearances. Doctors were present in interrogation rooms... The middle class, Staub says, was pleased by the junta’s economic policy and was unmoved by the repression that accompanied it.”

In India, ‘development’ and ‘economic progress’ have become the legitimate myths, justifications, war cries; the apathy, for the killing of the illegitimate children of the Republic.
Javed Iqbal is a journalist