Abuse of power: NCHR to probe police torture

Cases of torture uncovered after analysing reports of District Standing Medical Board

The National Commission on Human Rights (NCHR) has launched an inquiry into nearly 1,500 cases of torture which were uncovered in just one district of Punjab, Faisalabad.

Torture had been uncovered in the report ‘Policing as Torture: A Report on Systematic Brutality and Torture by the Police in Faisalabad’.

The report had been prepared by the Justice Project Pakistan (JPP) in collaboration with Yale Law School. It revealed that conclusive signs of abuse were found in 1,424 cases out of a sample of 1,867 medico-legal certificates from 2006 and 2012 compiled by a government-appointed District Standing Medical Board in Faisalabad.

In 96 other cases, physicians had found signs indicating injury which required further testing to confirm torture.

According to the data, out of the 1,424 cases, 58 of the victims were children and at least 134 were women.

In response to a JPP complaint detailing the widespread, systematic abuse and torture perpetuated by the Faisalabad police, NCHR Chairman Justice (retired) Ali Nawaz Chowhan and commissioners Chaudhry Shafique and Fazila Aliani held a hearing with representatives of the Faisalabad District Standing Medical Board and the Faisalabad police.

Expressing serious concerns over the lack of legislation criminalising torture in Pakistan, the NCHR stated that it would be visiting Faisalabad to investigate the tortures as part of their inquiry.

Moreover, the NCHR will also hold a hearing for the victims, perpetrators and stakeholders in Faisalabad in the last week of May. Justice Chowhan, while summoning the perpetrators of torture named in JPP’s findings, remakred, “Those who commit torture should be exposed.”

During the proceedings, JPP Executive Director Barrister Sarah Belal told the NCHR that there was no redress provided to any of the victims of police torture and that the accountability mechanisms which exist under the current law had failed to provide relief to the victims.

Dr Khurram Raja remarked that the District Standing Medical Board only looks at cases that are referred to it by the courts, suggesting that the actual picture of torture by the police could be much higher.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 4^th, 2018.