India operating 40 secret ‘Gitmos’: report

Ex-IB joint director blames 'harsh interrogation techniques' in illegal detention centres for fanning militancy in Indian Punjab, IHK




By Iftikhar Gilani




NEW DELHI: The United States may have been forced to close the Guantanamo Bay detention centre but India runs 40 such "illegal" secret chambers across the country, one of India's leading magazine revealed in its forthcoming issue.




An early copy of The Week obtained by Daily Times reveals the horror of the torture chambers, where suspects were subjected to extreme interrogation techniques for years. "I could never again dream of doing the things I did when I was in charge," said Maloy Krishna Dhar, former joint director of the Intelligence Bureau (IB), while admitting to the existence of such centres. Top police officers also told the journal that these chambers were their "assets". "They are our own little Guantanamos," they said.




Quoting KS Subramanian, former director general of police, who has also served in the IB, it said these sites existed and were being used to detain and interrogate suspected terrorists and have been operating for a long time. Dhar admitted that these centres fanned militancy in Indian Punjab and IHK. The magazine's investigating team has identified 15 such centres - three each in Mumbai, New Delhi, Gujarat and Indian-held Kashmir (IHK), two in Kolkata and one in Assam. But officials claim the number could be around 40.




Torture: An officer who had worked in one of the detention centres admitted extreme physical and mental torture, based loosely on the Guantanamo model, was used to extract information from detainees. It included an assault on the senses and sleep deprivation, keeping the prisoners naked, and forcibly administering drugs through the rectum. "In extreme cases we use pethidine injections. It makes a person crazy." The Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) questioned Saeed Khan (name changed), one of the accused in the Malegaon blasts of September 2006, held at the Aarey Colony facility in Goregaon, the biggest of the three detention centres in Mumbai. He was served food at irregular intervals (leading to temporary disorientation) and was denied sleep.




Parvez Ahmed Radoo, 30, of Baramulla district in IHK, a student at Pune University, was illegally detained in New Delhi for over a month for allegedly plotting mass murder in the capital on behalf of the Jaish-e-Muhammad. Radoo wrote an open letter from the Tihar jail, where he is currently held, saying he was arrested from the airport on September 12 and kept in custody for a month. Apparently, he was first taken to the Lodhi Colony police station and then to an apartment in the Dwarka locality in southwest New Delhi where electrodes were attached to his genitals. Dhar says such detention and torture centres were an inevitable part of the war on terrorism. Security agencies needed such facilities. Molvi Iqbal from Uttar Pradesh, a suspected member of the Harkatul Jihad-e-Islami, currently lodged in Tihar, was held at a secret detention centre for two months, according to his relatives. They alleged that a chip was implanted in his body to track his movements. "He fears that the chip is still inside his skin," said one of his relatives. "That has shattered him."




The most recent victim of torture was Manzoor Ahmed Baig, 40, who was picked up by the Special Operations Group from the Alucha Bagh area in Srinagar on May 18. His family alleged that he was chained, hung upside down and ruthlessly beaten up. He died that night. Following public outrage, the officer in charge of the camp was dismissed from service in June. Subramanian says agencies such as the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) and the IB, and not the Home Ministry, directly handled such operations. He, however, called for increased public awareness about such activities and believed it could help check such illegalities.