Unconscionable

The courts in India have woken up at last to the brutal torture that Soni Sori, a tribal school teacher, is reported to have been subjected to.

In the wake of an international campaign to secure her release, the Supreme Court has ordered an expert panel of the All India Institute for Medical Sciences to examine her, ascertain the charges and submit a report. Sori was arrested in Delhi on charges of being a Maoist sympathiser, who acted as a conduit between a major business group and the Maoists.

She was kept in jail in Chhattisgarh where she was reportedly beaten, electrocuted and subjected to sexual violence. A team of medical experts from a Kolkata hospital submitted a report to the apex court last year, confirming Sori’s allegations of sexual violence. It found stones in her vagina and rectum. Still the victim was sent back to jail in Chhattisgarh. The police claim that Amnesty International’s declaration of Sori as a ‘prisoner of conscience’ and the international campaign to secure justice for her is aimed at embarrassing the state. Even if Sori is a Maoist sympathiser it does not justify torture. If she is indeed a Maoist, the police must file charges and put her on trial under the law of the land.

Over the past several months, human rights activists have been calling for the arrest of Superintendent of Police Ankit Garg who is alleged to have tortured Sori. Instead of probing the allegations against him, the Indian government honoured him with a gallantry medal on Republic Day. In doing so, it has indicated that it condones, indeed endorses torture. The State has sided with a pervert.

Its condoning of torture is not new. It has failed to take strong steps to stop torture. Although it signed the United Nations Convention against Torture in 1997, it did not ratify the document. Domestic legislation to prevent torture is pending. An anti-torture bill that came before Parliament was so weak and riddled with loopholes that experts dismissed it as the ‘sanction of torture bill.’ Authorities look upon torture as an essential weapon in their arsenal to fight terrorism and crime; hence their reluctance to put in place a strong law that prevents and punishes torture. Torture is morally reprehensible and it cannot be condoned under any circumstances.