The old colonial system of applying third degree methods that was used during the British Raj for prisoner confessions and interrogations is still prevalent in super-power India, more than 60 years later. Physical torture of various forms including beatings without leaving visible marks, housing in filthy prisons, and un-hygienically cooked 500 calorie meals or less are routinely used to intimidate prisoners. This is tantamount to using papyrus in a computer age. Police are supposed to depend on sophisticated questioning techniques, mental traps, stalking movements, relying on visual and forensic technology and other modern methods since employed by police forces. Instead India has copped out of modernizing its law and order by spending less on progressive strategy and training and instead still relying on the old inhumane methods. While elsewhere the emphasis has been on rehabilitation of criminals, India continues to hold punishment as the desired objective. This has led to fertile recruitment of new criminals by the old incarcerated hands of organized gangs. There is an old saying in Indian jails and prisons that holds true even today - that once you go inside you will either come out a hardened criminal or a completely reformed one. The former rather than the latter has proved to be true. Within this context, Indian interrogators are now increasingly depending on Narco Analysis. This is an extra-legal confession tool that is used to extract information from terrorists and internal dissidents with the courts turning a blind eye. Arun Ferreira talks of being subjected to it in his essay extract. It is shocking to note that narco analysis depends on sodium pentothal the "truth serum" which is one of the compounds used in the lethal injection cocktail in the US for execution of death row prisoners. It slows the heart and then stops it entirely. It is high time such interrogation methods have no place in a civilized society. Roland. Toronto.
