III. CHILDREN IN POLICE CUSTODY

On the morning of May 12, 1998, police arrested thirteen-year-old Ghulam Jilani at his home in Killay De Kassi, a village in the Hazara division of the North-West Frontier Province. Jilani, who had a fifth grade education and worked as a minibus conductor, was taken to the police station in the neighboring town of Mansehra. The police had registered a First Information Report (FIR)24 against Jilani for the theft of Rs. 2,700 ($53) from the cash box of a store near his home.25 Sajid, a boy of about fifteen years, was also arrested in the case. That afternoon, police informed Ghulam Rabbani, Jilani's father, that his son had been hospitalized. When Rabbani reached the hospital, he was told that Jilani had died, and that an autopsy was being performed.26

In a FIR filed shortly before 4:00 p.m. that day, police officer Muhammad Iqbal alleged that Jilani had attempted to commit suicide in violation of section 325 of the Pakistan Penal Code.

The accused Jilani ... was locked in his prison cell along with Sajid. He climbed the wall of the latrine located inside the prison cell, and tried to hang himself by tying a rope around his neck. At this point, the fellow prisoner Sajid shouted that Jilani had hung himself. I...ran towards the cell, and after opening the lock, brought down the accused. Froth was coming out of hismouth, and he was unconscious. He was rushed to the hospital. Presently, the accused is alive, but his condition is critical.27

Sajid himself had a markedly different account to relate:

We were both kept in the same room at the police station. After some time, Ghulam Jilani was taken away from that room. When he was brought back, he was bleeding from the nose and mouth. The bleeding was so horrifying that I became afraid, and I covered my face with a piece of cloth. Soon after this, I was released from the police station.28

The autopsy report stated that Jilani died of head injuries, a finding that prompted Rabbani to file a criminal complaint of murder against Muhammad Nawaz, the head constable of the Mansehra police station.29 A medical examination of Sajid, conducted on May 18, indicated that he too had sustained physical abuse while in custody. According to the medical examiner's report, he was complaining of aches and pains throughout his body and appeared to have been beaten with a blunt object.30

Authorities at first appeared eager to deflect attention from the case. According to Rabbani,

The local administration pressured us to bury the body as soon as possible, because they feared unrest. Because of this pressure, and also pressure from some influential people in the area, we buried the body at 9:00 a.m. [on May 13]. My daughter lives in Lahore; we could not even inform her.31

By the time of the funeral, however, word of Jilani's death had already spread throughout Mansehra and its environs. What ensued were the worst riots in the town's history.32

On the night of May 12, protesters reportedly set fire to the offices of the Mansehra superintendent of police. The following morning, police used tear gas to disperse a protest march following Jilani's funeral, sparking a violent response from the demonstrators. Over the course of the day, protesters ransacked the local office of the ruling Pakistan Muslim League (PML), set fire to government offices and private businesses, and blocked the strategic Karakoram Highway for over seven hours. Police and paramilitary rangers exchanged fire with armed protesters, resulting in two acknowledged deaths (five by unofficial accounts), as well as over one hundred injuries. The riots rapidly engulfed other towns in the district and subsided on May 15 only after a heavy deployment of police, rangers, and the Frontier Constabulary.33

For all the damage that it entailed, the unrest in Mansehra precipitated an official response to Ghulam Jilani's death that would probably not have been forthcoming otherwise. Constable Nawaz was arrested and charged with murder,34 while the Chief Minister of the North-West Frontier Province, Sardar Mahtab Ahmad Khan, visited Jilani's family and gave Rabbani Rs. 100,000 ($1961) in compensation for the loss of his son.35 The Chief Minister also appointed a tribunal of inquiry into Jilani's death, headed by Syed Yahya Zahid Gillani, the district and sessions judge for Abbottabad.36 A Human Rights Watch researcher who visited Abbottabad in August 1998 learned that the tribunal's report had been completed and submitted to the Chief Minister, but had not been released to the public.

Custodial Abuse of Children

Ghulam Jilani's case is unusual in two respects: first, that the injuries he sustained while in custody were severe enough to cause his death, and second, that his treatment by the police provoked a public outcry and, in turn, officialintervention. But the central fact of his torture, and the possibility that he had been illegally detained, is sadly emblematic of what Pakistani children experience at the hands of law enforcement authorities. Both of these abuses are expressly prohibited by the Convention on the Rights of the Child. Article 37 of the convention states that no child shall be "subjected to torture or other cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment" or "deprived of his or her liberty unlawfully and arbitrarily."

Although Pakistan has neither signed nor ratified the United Nations Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, the definition of torture contained therein reflects standards that are widely accepted by the international community.37 The definition is furthermore likely to guide the U.N. Committee on the Rights of the Child in evaluating Pakistan's compliance with the prohibition of torture under article 37 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child. Pakistan itself signaled its recognition of the underlying standards in 1994 by inviting Nigel Rodley, the U.N. special rapporteur on torture, to visit the country and investigate reports of custodial torture-a mission that the special rapporteur carried out in 1996.

Other international norms codified in the Convention against Torture include the right of individuals to complain to the appropriate authorities, without fear of retaliation,38 and the obligation of states to conduct prompt and impartial investigations "wherever there is reasonable ground to believe that an act of torture has been committed...."39

Conditions in Police Custody

Conditions in police lockups, as described by child prisoners to Human Rights Watch, were typically dire. Children and adults were almost always held together, and detainees either had to purchase food from vendors or rely on family members to deliver their meals. One boy, who spent twelve days in police custody, had food only because other detainees shared their meals with him. The lockups housed anywhere from five to thirty people at a time. Taher Hussain, a fifteen-year-old who spent a month in custody at the Garden Town police station in Lahore, said, "There were about twenty-five to thirty people in the lockup. When there were more, we couldn't lie down. Whenever it rained, water used to seep in from the roof."40

Fourteen of the twenty children Human Rights Watch interviewed reported having been physically abused, often severely, while in police custody. The abuse itself ranged from slaps on the face following their arrest to sustained torture over the course of several days, including being hung upside-down, beaten, whipped with rubber belts or specially designed leather slippers, or deprived of sleep.

Their testimony corroborates findings documented in 1997 by a Pakistani medical team that interviewed two hundred children in Karachi's Youthful Offenders Industrial School.41 The team classified the torture and ill-treatment to which children were subjected into two categories: "major torture" and "minor torture." Major torture included severe beatings, electric shocks, hanging, cheera,42 cuts, and burns. Minor torture included slapping, verbal abuse, food deprivation, solitary confinement, and being forced to maintain uncomfortable body positions. Applying these standards, the team found that 59.7 percent had been subjected to major torture, and 18.9 percent to minor torture only, while in police custody. Other studies have shown custodial torture to be pervasive, affecting adults and children alike. The report submitted by the U.N. special rapporteur on torture, following his 1996 visit to Pakistan, noted:

Most of the prisoners who dared to speak claimed to have been ill treated while in custody and/or to have witnessed the ill-treatment of other prisoners. The ill-treatment described included beatings, burning with cigarettes, whippings with rubber or leather straps, sexual assault, being hung upside down for prolonged periods, electric shocks, deprivation of sleep, mock executions, the use of fetters, blindfolding for periods of up to 16 days and public humiliation.... Marks of torture were visible on several of the prisoners; one prisoner removed his shirt to show the Special Rapporteur the large welts on his back caused by whippings with a leather strap.43

Three boys interviewed by Human Rights Watch in Bahawalpur and Lahore described having been beaten with a leather instrument resembling a slipper. According to Imtiaz Ahmad, a seventeen-year-old resident of Lahore who was arrested for dacoity, "I was in a lockup for twelve days, and was beaten every day. There were slippers especially made for this purpose, and they used to beat me every day with them."44

Rubber straps, as the special rapporteur noted above, are also widely used as torture instruments. Fifteen-year-old Mohammad Shafique was arrested for the theft of a civil servant's motorcycle. He told Human Rights Watch,

I was taken to a police station in Khairpur [about twenty-five miles from Bahawalpur]. As they had recovered the bike, they asked what else I had stolen. I was whipped with a rubber strap or lash used to rotate a motor, like a fan belt. This lasted for fifteen days. Then a magistrate ordered my transfer here [to the Bahawalpur borstal].45

Among the forms of torture encountered by Human Rights Watch in interviews with Pakistani children was the repeated hanging of a detainee upside down. Manzoor Abbas, a sixteen-year-old from Lahore charged with weapons possession, said "I was taken to a police station on Ravi Road. I stayed there forfive to six days. They used to tie me with a rope, and turn me upside down, with my head facing the ground."46

More often, however, children in police custody were subjected to beatings. Noor Mohammad, a seventeen-year-old from Faisalabad, said he was arrested by police after being falsely named in a gang rape case. "They took me to the Ghulam Mohammadabad police station. I stayed there for four days. I was severely beaten, until I was unable to walk."47

According to testimony gathered by Human Rights Watch, torture of detainees is sometimes carried out in special cells within the police station. Seventeen-year-old Fayaz Iqbal was arrested for murder and detained in the Chontra police station, near Rawalpindi. "I was beaten for four days by officials," he said. "They tied my hands with rope and beat me all over my body. They took me out from the police lockup to a special room for such things."48 In another case, police tortured a boy while holding him incommunicado away from the police station. Qaiser Nadeem, also seventeen and accused of murder, was arrested by police in Talagang, about sixty miles north of Rawalpindi.

About four police officers arrested me. They kept me in a room where I was subjected to beatings for nine days. The room was not within the premises of the station. I was told by the police that if I confess, I would be released and allowed to go home. But even after the beatings, I didn't confess. During these nine days, my family was not told of my whereabouts. On the ninth day, I was brought to the Talagang police station. Then my family was informed of my arrest.49

The practice of detaining and torturing suspects in private buildings or other facilities not meant for detention has been noted by other observers. As the special rapporteur on torture observed in his report on Pakistan, torture and other forms of ill-treatment are also facilitated by the widespread practice of holdingprisoners in incommunicado detention, sometimes in premises not designated for the purpose. In such undeclared places of detention, law enforcement personnel are able to commit human rights violations with impunity since legal safeguards against ill-treatment cannot be enforced and detection is unlikely.50

In most of the cases that we encountered, torture was employed to extract confessions or obtain information. However, the motives varied, with some police officers seeking to punish or intimidate detainees, or extort payment from them. Describing his treatment by police in Lahore's Garden Town police station, fifteen-year-old Taher Hussain told Human Rights Watch, "I was beaten all over the body, and the investigating officer demanded Rs. 50,000 ($980) to release me."51 Sexual abuse in police custody, as well as in prisons, is difficult to document. Local human rights activists claim that cultural factors inhibit children from testifying to such experiences. However, reports of sexual abuse periodically surface in the local press. The Peshawar daily Frontier Post reported on June 24, 1997, that police officers in the town of Jauharabad had allegedly assaulted four boys, Tariq Aziz, Muhammad Assad, Farooq, and Ghulam Abbas, while holding them in custody. The boys were detained as suspects in theft cases, illegally held for twenty days in the Jauharabad police station, and then remanded to police custody, the boys' parents told the Frontier Post. The parents further said that their children were repeatedly removed from the lockup on the pretext of interrogation, and sodomized by the assistant sub-inspector, the head constable, and several other constables. Although the parents reportedly complained to police authorities, they said the only action taken was the registration of a case against Ameer Sultan, the head constable of the Jauharabad station, for attempt to commit sodomy.52

Illegal Detention

The custodial abuse of children is compounded by the problem of illegal detention. Although Pakistani law requires that detainees be brought before a magistrate within twenty-four hours of their arrest, most of the children interviewed by Human Rights Watch said they had been held in police lockups for considerably longer periods before being produced in front of a magistrate-often for two weeks, and in one case, for three months. Given the widespread use of tortureduring interrogation, such prolonged detention greatly increases the risk and potential duration of custodial abuse.

Under article 10(2) of Pakistan's Constitution, "[e]very person who is arrested and detained in custody shall be produced before a magistrate within a period of twenty-four hours of such arrest." This provision is elaborated upon by sections 61 and 167 of the Criminal Procedure Code. Section 61 states that:

No police officer shall detain in custody a person arrested without warrant for a longer period than under all the circumstances of the case is reasonable, and such period shall not, in the absence of a special order of a Magistrate under section 167, exceed twenty-four hours exclusive of the time necessary for the journey from the place of arrest to the Magistrate's Court.

Section 167 provides for judicial remand in situations "where the investigation cannot be completed within the period of twenty-four hours fixed by section 61, and there are grounds for believing that the accusation or information is well-founded." It allows the nearest judicial magistrate to authorize continued detention for a term of up to fifteen days upon production of the accused, and a copy of the diary entries relating to the case, by the officer in charge of the police station or the investigating officer.

Out of twenty juveniles interviewed by Human Rights Watch in Bahawalpur, Lahore, and Rawalpindi, at least thirteen had been held by police without judicial remand for over twenty-four hours. Eleven of those thirteen spent more than a week in police lockups before they were produced in court, including three who remained in custody for one to two months. These figures correspond well to the results of a 1992 study by the AGHS Legal Aid Cell in Lahore which found that "out of 50 child prisoners interviewed only 16 had been produced in court within the required 24 hours. Many had been detained well beyond the maximum remand period of fifteen days, sometimes for months."53 Such cases are not always provable, however, because the dates of arrest in police records are sometimes falsified to show that the accused was produced in court within a twenty-four hour period.

Human Rights Watch observed a pre-trial hearing on May 23, 1998, in Karachi's juvenile court involving three boys under the age of fourteen who were charged under section 12 of the Zina Ordinance and section 164 of the PakistanPenal Code with abducting and sodomizing another boy. All three had been arrested on May 21, 1998, according to their lawyer. The police record produced in court, however, listed the arrest as having been effected on May 22. The discrepancy prompted the presiding magistrate, Neelofar Shahnawaz, to note that such incorrect dates were "a routine matter."54

Although the police report stated that the three boys had confessed, they denied the charges before the magistrate and stated that they had been beaten in custody. According to their lawyer, the investigating officer had promised the boys that they would be released if they confessed, but that they would otherwise be sent to prison. The lawyer noted that the police had not submitted a medical report, nor had the boys' or their alleged victim's clothing been seized and examined for semen stains. Because the offenses with which the boys were charged were triable only by a higher court, the juvenile magistrate's role was limited to the question of remand. In this case, the magistrate ordered the boys' transfer from police custody to Karachi's remand home.

Human Rights Watch documented one case in which an eight-year-old boy was transferred from a police lockup to Lahore District Jail, without ever having been brought before a magistrate. The boy, Tariq Masih, was arrested during an apparent round-up of Christians in Lahore who were suspected of having taken part in protests against Pakistan's blasphemy law:55

I was arrested about five days ago while on a public transport bus. I had gone to visit my sister and was coming home. I was stopped by two police officers at a bus station on Lytton Road and taken to a nearby police station.

I belong to the Christian faith. I was told by the police officers that I was involved in a protest demonstration. The police didn't listen to me when I tried to convince them that I wasn't at the protest. The boys sitting next to me were coming from that demonstration, and we were all arrested together.

I was kept in a lockup for one or two days. My family was informed of my arrest by someone who knows us. They visited me in the police station. I was taken to the magistrate's court, but not taken out of the car. Then I was brought here.56

On several occasions, the provincial high courts have forced police to produce illegally detained children in court, following the filing of habeas corpus writ petitions by family members. Three such cases reported in the Pakistani press involved children who had apparently been detained by police in order to compel the surrender of adult relatives.

C Police in southern Punjab reportedly seized twelve-year-old Waqar Ahsan from his home in Gujarpura on December 9, 1997, and illegally detained him in the nearby town of Bahawalpur for two months. Ahsan was brought before the Lahore High Court on February 17, 1998, after his mother filed a writ petition claiming that the police were holding him hostage in order to compel his father's surrender on dacoity charges. The police contended that the boy, rather than being held in custody, was living with a family friend in a neighboring village-a claim that the court rejected.57

C On January 13, 1998, the Lahore High Court fined an Okara, Punjab, station house officer Rs. 5,000 for detaining eight-year-old Muhammad Akhtar in a lockup in Mandi Ahmadabad police station without having registered a criminal case against him. The officer, Sub-Inspector Ubaidullah, had raided Akhtar's house on January 5, 1998, to arrest his uncle, Noor Ahmed, in a murder case, and detained the boy after failing to find the uncle. The court also registered a criminal case against the officer and ordered the police department to take strict disciplinary action against him.58

C A Lahore High Court bailiff on November 20, 1997, recovered twelve-year-old Muhammad Ayub from the Duniyapur police station, in Multan, Punjab, after the boy's grandmother filed a writ petition for his recovery. The Karachi-based daily Dawn reported a police official as saying that Ayub had been detained to ensure the arrest of his uncle, Mangat, in connection with a dacoity case.59

In our interviews with child prisoners and in Pakistani press accounts, there were repeated allegations that police had arrested children in an effort to displace the blame from other, more influential personalities whom they knew to be culpable. Although these accusations are difficult to corroborate, one such case prompted the intervention of Pakistan's president, Mohammed Rafiq Tarar. Thirteen-year-old Qadir Hameed from Kirpa Chira, a village near Islamabad, told us:

I used to take my cattle for grazing. One day, I saw four people carrying a dead body, which they wanted to throw into our house. They followed me, but I quickly ran into someone else's house. The next day, my father was arrested by the police on murder charges. On the third day after the occurrence, I went to meet my father at the Sihala police station. The police officials there told me I was also involved in the murder, and arrested me. I was told I was named in the FIR.

I stayed at the Sihala station for eleven days. The police used to make me stand the whole night and beat me, and ask me to confess. After eleven days, I was taken to the magistrate; then I was sent here [to Rawalpindi Central Prison].60

The Pakistani daily Dawn reported on April 15 that President Tarar had directed the inspector general of police for Punjab, Tariq Saleem Lone, to reopen the inquiry into the Sihala murder. Describing counter-allegations of a police cover-up, Dawn noted, "[B]oth the Sihala police and the alleged murderers had struck a deal to hush up the matter. But in order to save their skin, they involvedthe student and his father in the case under section 302/34 [governing murder]. Both were arrested and subjected to torture by police...."61

Because Hameed himself was not presented before a magistrate until eleven days after his arrest, his detention, at least, was illegal. Despite the President's order to reopen the police investigation into the case, at the time Human Rights Watch interviewed Hameed, on May 15, 1998, his trial was already underway:

My trial has commenced-it's pending before the additional sessions judge in Islamabad. The first hearing was on April 29th. I was informed [of the hearing date] the day before. My father and I are being tried together.62 My brother engaged a lawyer, but I've never met him. He couldn't come to court on the date of the hearing. My next hearing is on May 19.

37 The convention defines torture as " ...any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity. It does not include pain or suffering arising only from, inherent in or incidental to lawful sanctions." United Nations Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, G.A. res. 39/46, annex, 39 U.N. GAOR Supp. (No. 51) at 197, U.N. Doc. A/39/51 (1984) (entered into force June 26, 1987), Part I, Article 1(1).

38 Ibid., Article 13.

39 Ibid., Article 12.

40 Human Rights Watch interview with Taher Hussain, District Jail, Lahore, May 21, 1998.

41 Amin A. Gadit, Ahsan A. Vahidy, and Najib Khalid, "Children of the Corn: A Study Conducted at Juvenile Prison in Karachi - Overview I," Pakistan Pediatric Journal, Vol. 21, No. 1 (7-12) (1997), p. 9.

42 "Forced stretching apart of the victim's legs, sometimes in combination with kicks to the genitalia." U.N. Commission on Human Rights, Report of the Special Rapporteur on Torture and Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, Visit by the Special Rapporteur to Pakistan, U.N. Doc. E/CN.4/1997/7/Add.2, 15 October 1996 (Nigel Rodley, Special Rapporteur), para. 14.

43 Report of the Special Rapporteur on Torture, para. 46.

44 Human Rights Watch interview with Imtiaz Ahmad, District Jail, Lahore, May 21, 1998.

45 Human Rights Watch interview with Mohammad Shafique, Borstal Institute and Juvenile Jail, Bahawalpur, May 18, 1998.

46 Human Rights Watch interview with Manzoor Abbas, District Jail, Lahore, May 21, 1998.

47 Human Rights Watch interview with Noor Mohammad, Borstal Institute and Juvenile Jail, Bahawalpur, May 18, 1998. Mohammad's age was reported as eighteen on an official list of convicted prisoners in the borstal, signed by the Superintendent on March 3, 1998.

48 Human Rights Watch interview with Fayaz Iqbal, Central Prison, Rawalpindi, May 15, 1998.

49 Human Rights Watch interview with Qaiser Nadeem, Central Prison, Rawalpindi, May 15, 1998.

50 Report of the Special Rapporteur on Torture, para. 19.

51 Human Rights Watch interview with Taher Hussain, District Jail, Lahore, May 21, 1998. Police attempts at extortion were also reported by prisoners to the Special Rapporteur during his visit to Pakistan. See Report of the Special Rapporteur on Torture, para. 46.

52 "Resentment over police intercourse with minors," Frontier Post, June 24, 1997, p. 8.

53 Jahangir and Doucet, Children of a Lesser God, p. 15.

54 Human Rights Watch interview with Neelofar Shahnawaz, Judicial Magistrate, Juvenile Court (Karachi Division), Karachi, May 23, 1998.

55 Section 295-C of the Pakistan Penal Code makes it an offense punishable by death or imprisonment for life to directly or indirectly defile the name of the Prophet Muhammad.

56 Human Rights Watch interview with Tariq Masih, District Jail, Lahore, May 21, 1998.

57 See "Police holding boy hostage, LHC Told," Dawn, February 5, 1998, p. 8; "Police ordered to produce boy or face kidnap case," Dawn, February 11, 1998, p. 9; and "Boy's abduction: LHC rejects police version," Dawn, February 18, 1998, p. 7.

58 "Court punishes SHO for illegally confining minor," News International, January 13, 1998.

59 "Bailiff recovers boy from police station," Dawn, November 19, 1997, p. 8.

60 Human Rights Watch interview with Qadir Hameed, Central Prison, Rawalpindi, May 15, 1998.

61 "Sihala murder inquiry reopens," Dawn, April 15, 1998, p. 3.

62 Article 10 of the Punjab Youthful Offenders Ordinance forbids joint trials of adults and children in cases where Sessions courts have exclusive jurisdiction, such as murder. At the time of our interview with Hameed, however, the Ordinance was only in force in the district of Sahiwal. The Criminal Procedure Code does not require separate trials for adults and children.