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Barak Human Rights Protection Committee (BHRPC), a human rights organization working in Assam, today on the occasion of International Anti-Torture Day has written a letter to the Prime Minister of India bringing briefly into his notice the torture situation in India and the measures needed to be taken to combat and eradicate this systematic barbarism and inhumanity.

BHRPC has reiterated its conviction that torture is deliberate cruelty, a crude and ancient tool of political oppression. It is commonly used to terrorize people, or to wring confessions out of suspected criminals who may or may not be guilty. It is the classic shortcut for a lazy or incompetent investigator.

The letter states, torture destroys the physical and mental integrity of the victim to its core. It also dehumanizes the performer and thus irreparable damages done to men, women and children, families and communities. It prevents societies from nurturing the human and economic development that is a right for all people.

Torture is now absolutely and without any reservation prohibited under international law, whether in time of peace or of war. The prohibition of torture can be considered to belong to the rules of jus cogens. If ever a phenomenon was outlawed unreservedly and unequivocally it is torture.

It is also prohibited in India mainly by Article 21 of the Constitution, section 330 and 331 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC), 1860 and other laws and also strongly condemned by the Supreme Court of India and High Courts in a number of landmark cases like D. K. Basu Vs. State of West Bengal.