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‘Truth Serum’

Intelligence officers in India’s ever expanding internal security network are not trained in ‘School of Americas’. But they do not lag behind in modernising torture techniques. They call it narcoanalysis or lie detection device. Or there is a more innocuous term—‘truth serum’. What finally boils down to is crude torture of prisoners in custody.

In truth administering of sodium pentothal to prisoners for extracting confessions may be considered a third degree torture by any standards. Some detectives in India still adopt narco-analysis, despite the Supreme Court ruling (2010), that it was not only unreliable but also ‘‘cruel, inhuman and degrading’’. Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) investigators have asked a judge for permission to administer sodium pentothal to Jagan Mohan Reddy, the charismatic son of Y S Rajasekhara Reddy, the former chief minister of Andhra Pradesh, who died in a mysterious helicopter crash in 2009. The CBI argues that the technique is warranted because neither Reddy nor his financial advisor auditor, are co-operating with the inquiry into embezzlement allegations. The barbiturate drug acts on the central nervuos system, dissolving anxiety, inducing drowsiness and even unconsciousness.

Narcoanalysis is used enthusiastically in Gujarat and Karnataka. It takes almost a week to test a single person. The drug decreases the individual’s ability to lie, but the revelations supposedly made under the influence of ‘truth serum’ (i.e. pentothal) may contain fatasies similar to ramblings under alcohol influence. Arun Ferreira, a political activist, who was arrested in 2007 under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act, for being an alleged Maoist was tortured with forced narco analysis. His harrowing tale of torture under narcoanalysis is simply bone-chilling. Citing the United Nations Convention against torture, many experts believe narcoanalysis can be classed as torture without any hesitation. And yet India’s police department is increasingly using it. India’s parliament has never ratified the Convention, though the country has signed the Convention in 1997. Many detainees have complained of health problems after narcoanalysis. Then the authorities do not bother about prisoners’ right.

Human rights bodis are yet to act on this issue otherwise an illegality that the intelligence branch people resort to. It is not known how many maoists are being routinely subjected to such third degree torture. Maoists apart, political opponents too are not immune to this obnoxious torture technique as it is the case with Jagan Mohan Reddy.

Frontier
Vol. 45, No. 11, Sep 23 -29 2012

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