Torture routine method of interrogation in India: Wikileaks
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COMMENTS 
A leaked diplomatic cable in the ongoing series of leaks by Wikileaks reveals a Red Cross assessment, gleaned from on-site visits, of widespread torture of prisoners in Kashmir by Indian security forces
The expose of secret American diplomatic cables by the whistleblower site Wikileaks has revealed widespread torture by Indian police and security forces of detainees in Kashmir, recorded by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and made known to American diplomats.
The abuse of hundreds of prisoners in jails in Kashmir included electrocution, beatings and sexual humiliation. The April 2005 cable from the US embassy in Delhi reports that the ICRC had become frustrated with the Indian government which, they said, had not acted to halt the ‘continued ill-treatment of detainees’.
The embassy reported the ICRC as concluding that India ‘condones torture’, and that the torture victims were civilians as militants were routinely killed.
The ICRC’s long-standing policy is to engage with governments directly and avoid the media. Its findings are therefore rarely made public. ICRC staff told US diplomats that they had made 177 visits to detention centres in Jammu and Kashmir and elsewhere in India, between 2002 and 2004, and had met 1,491 detainees. They had been able to interview 1,296 privately.
In 852 cases detainees reported ill-treatment, the ICRC said. A total of 171 described being beaten; 681 said they had been subjected to one or more of six forms of torture.
These included 498 on whom electricity had been used, 381 who were suspended from the ceiling, 294 who had their leg muscles crushed by prison personnel sitting on a bar placed across their thighs, 181 whose legs had been stretched by being ‘split 180 degrees’, 234 tortured with water, and 302 ‘sexual’ cases.
‘The numbers add up to more than 681, as many detainees were subjected to more than one form of IT (ill-treatment),’ the cable said.
According to the ICRC, all branches of the Indian security forces used these forms of ill-treatment and torture. It added: ‘The abuse always takes place in the presence of officers and… detainees were rarely militants (they are routinely killed) but persons connected to or believed to have information about the insurgency’.
The cable said the situation in Kashmir was ‘much better’ as security forces no longer roused entire villages in the middle of the night and detained inhabitants indiscriminately, and that there was ‘more openness from medical doctors and the police’.
Ten years ago, the ICRC said, there were some 300 detention centres but there are now ‘a lot fewer’. The organisation has never, however, gained access to ‘Cargo Building’, the most notorious detention centre in Srinagar.
The ICRC’s analysis of the insurgency and abuse by security forces is a bleak one. It says abuse continues because ‘security forces need promotions’, and militancy continues because ‘the insurgency has become a business’.
The ICRC said a ‘bright spot’ was that it had been able to conduct 300 sessions sensitising junior officers from the security forces to human rights.
In another Wikileaks expose, a US embassy cable of April 2006 says Indian security agencies routinely torture prisoners to extract information partly because forensic science is weak in the country -- there are only two forensics labs in India -- and there are very few trained police officers who can handle such data.
Around 251,287 cables from more than 250 US embassies around the world were obtained by Wikileaks and are being posted on select newspapers and internet news sites.
Source: Wikileaks, posted on The Guardian website, December 2010