Why police torture continues unabated

In the wee hours on Sunday, 13 July, 2014, Rabbi, a 5-year-old son of Mahbubur Rahman Sujan, saw how brutally police raided their home, tortured his parents, beat his father mercilessly, dragged him to their bathroom, and hit him with an iron rod while blood was still pouring down his nose. Rabbi saw his father begging water to drink but he was denied water. Rabbi with his palms folded had knelt on the ground and begged Sub-Inspector of Police Jahidur Rahman Khan for life of his father. Rabbi's pleas for mercy fell on deaf ears; the men in police uniform tied up his father with a rope, gagged his mouth with a piece of cloth and took him to a police van. At noon on Sunday, police informed Rabbi's mother that Rabbi's father Sujan was dead.
Sub-Inspector Jahidur Rahman Khan was closed from his duties on Sunday night. The same Sub-Inspector Jahidur, when he was working in Pallabi Police Station a few months earlier, was also closed from his duties in a similar incident for his alleged involvement in the custodial death of one Istiaq Ahmed Johnny, 28, a resident of Mirpur-11.
As reported, Sujan's wife Lucy said her husband who was in garment waste business in Mirpur area had regularly been paying Tk 5,000 to Tk 25,000 a month to local thugs and police. She further said: "Sub-Inspector Jahid is one of those people who took money from my husband. Over the last one year, Sub-Inspector Jahid had been demanding Tk 100 thousand (one lakh) a month but the amount was too high for my husband".
Only after a week and a half of Sujan's death at police custody, a student of City College nicknamed Jisan was so brutally tortured by police that one of his legs has been damaged beyond repair. Critically injured, Jisan is now admitted in a hospital fighting for his life.
After arresting Jisan on suspicion of involvement in a murder case, Dhanmodi police personnel allegedly even threatened to kill the boy, unless his family members paid them a large sum of ransom money. During the remand, Sub-inspector of Dhanmondi Police Station Sahidul Biswas and several other cops beat up Jisan, gave electric shocks and repeatedly pierced his left leg with syringes. The police demanded Tk 1.0 million (10 lakh) from his family to spare him the torture, the victim and his family alleged. Jisan's father said he gave Tk 400 thousand (four lakh) in two parts to a plainclothes man who demanded the money in the presence of Sahidul Biswas inside the Police Station. "But they tortured my son even after that," Jahidul Islam lamented.
There are very few countries in the world where torture is as systematic and endemic as in Bangladesh. But provisions in the Bangladesh Penal Code are supposed to penalise a person involved in acts that are considered as torture. But the offence hardly ever attracted any particular relevance if the crime was committed by a law-enforcement agent. The torture victims or their families lose the courage, strength and stamina to fight against police in a court of law where again money plays a big role. Even if an officer is ever charged with such a crime the reduced possibility of a proper forensic medical examination of a victim and the complete absence of a witness protection mechanism facilitates easy acquittal of the accused. Moreover, it is a common practice in our country for the accused to threaten the witnesses and tamper with the evidence in a case.
THE NEW LAW: The government deserves plaudits that a new law titled "Torture and Custodial Death (Prevention) Act 2013" has been passed by our parliament, as a measure to comply with UN Convention against torture and inhumane, cruel or degrading treatment.
The new law defines custodial death as any death in custody of any public servant, death in custody in illegal detention, death during arrest by law enforcers, and death during interrogation. It defines torture as any act or omission that causes physical or mental pain to any individual for obtaining from that individual or some other individual, information or a confession, or for punishing that individual for any act or omission, for intimidating or coercing that person or some other person. It also says causing physical or mental pain to an individual through discrimination at instigation of someone or at the individual capacity or government capacity would also be considered as torture.
The act also provides strong punishment for custodial deaths. Under this law, if anyone dies from torture in custody, the convicted individual would be sentenced to maximum life-term jail or minimum Tk 100,000 as fine or both. In addition, the convicted individual would have to pay compensation of Tk 200,000 to the family of the victim. The law further mandates that any investigation into cases of torture will have to be completed within 90 days of registration of a complaint, and the trial will have to be completed within 180 days. It also mandates suspension of the accused from service during investigation.
Torture and Custodial Death (Prevention) Act 2013 is a revolutionary law passed by our parliament. With the law passed no person is supposed to be subjected to torture at least by police; but the reality has been completely different. Police torture continues unabated when the law is in full force. Does it mean we are always righteous when we speak or pass laws and play just the reverse role when we are called to act upon?  
CLIMATE OF IMPUNITY: The police force in our country has unfortunately been framed as an oppressive force designed to keep the population under coercive control. They have been given to understand that they can operate in a climate of impunity, where torture is seen as routine police behaviour to extract confessions from small pickpockets to political suspects.
Some police officers justify the use of torture to extract confessions and instill fear into the minds of criminals. There is no denying of this justification in our social context. The police are understaffed, under-equipped, underpaid and extremely stressed when they have to deal under tremendous pressure with enforcing law and order and the authority asks them for quick results. They have to manage everything from law and order to political unrest to petty domestic disputes. They have to pick up and interrogate a lot of people and settle the pending cases within a timeframe. In such overwhelming situations things sometimes get out of their control and at times there find no way out except beating a suspect to extract a quick confession.
We have come to learn about Sujan's death and the disability of Jisan's leg while they were in police custody as these two incidents have been widely published and criticised on the front pages of newspapers. But the incidents are just a tiny fraction of what is happening in the dark chambers of police stations.
PSYCHOLOGICAL TRAUMA: There are torture cases where police use unobtrusive tools that leave no fractures, no blood, no rash, no major peeling of the skin. Those tortures inflict so much pains that the victim will confess to any crime the police would wish to have. If a victim dies from such tortures nothing shows up in the postmortem report that the victim was ever tortured.
Those innocuous people who have been tortured by police lose their faculties, leading to permanent disability of their bodies and they have to pass the rest of their lives in acute psychological trauma. These victims keep mum. They are just grateful for God's mercy that they are still alive and free; they or their family members are the last persons in the world to disclose their traumatic experiences to a newsman, let alone file a case against the torturers. They are the silent majority of the tortured whose agonies and pains the world will never come to know about.
It is surprising that police torture or custodial deaths hardly features as a red-button issue for Bangladeshis and does not generate much political attention as there is a misconception among people that all the victims are bad people and they deserve torture and that torture, even though illegal, is the only way of extracting crucial information from the suspects. But such assumptions are misleading. Torture hardly yields accurate information. Victims often confess in utter desperation to crimes they have not committed, while the real perpetrators roam free.
HUMAN RIGHTS CULTURE: Should not we see the end of police torture? Shouldn't the policy makers feel pangs of pain at the plight of those who for no fault of their own are being tortured only for money?
It is our failure that we have not been able to build a human rights culture in the police force. The dehumanising torture, beating and death in police custody have assumed alarming proportions that now raise serious questions about the credibility of the rule of law and the criminal justice system in our country. The cry for justice demands instant corrective measures.
As a measure of deterrence to torture and other excesses in police investigations CCTV cameras may immediately be installed in all the police stations to monitor their activities and discourage their brutality. It is high time we retrained our law-enforcement forces and bring about reform in their attitudes so that each man and woman in police and other law-enforcement agencies commit themselves to the core philosophy of their services and dedicate their jobs for people as protectors, not as predators.
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