It is common facts that the police try to extract confessions from detainees using torture
The constitution of Nepal prohibits any person in detention from being subjected to physical or mental torture. However, despite torture being criminalised by national – and international – laws, it continues to be prevalent in Nepal's prisons. The scale of torture, especially at the hands of the police, is hard to gauge because very few victims file cases due to the process involved, where a first information report must be filed with the police, the very people who might have been the perpetrators. But from interviews conducted by advocacy and rights groups of detainees, it would be safe to conclude that at least a fifth of all detainees undergo some form of ill-treatment during confinement. Now rights activists are demanding that the government amend torture laws, set up an independent mechanism to investigate torture cases and create a national fund to compensate torture victims. The Penal Code, for instance, may have prohibited torture, but it has also imposed a statute of limitation of six months for reporting crimes of torture. So without amending the existing laws, torture victims, especially of the conflict period, cannot file a case or seek compensation from the government.
With the end of the decade-long brutal Maoist insurgency that saw the deaths of 17,000 people, the situation of torture has definitely improved in the country. Exactly how many people fell victim to torture during the insurgency period is, however, hard to say with the number of torture cases filed with different rights bodies tending to vary largely.
The National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) has registered just 358 complaints while Advocacy Forum has documented 1,284 cases of torture, beatings and mutilations during the Maoist insurgency. Torture was carried out by different actors, ranging from the security forces to the Maoists and government-sponsored vigilante groups, the village defense forces. It was to be expected that incidents of torture would be widespread during the conflict. However, torture or ill-treatment of detainees should not continue during normal times.
It is common knowledge that the police, instead of carrying out a proper investigation, try to extract a confession from a detainee through ill-treatment or coercion. And this continues to be tolerated because the government is reluctant to prosecute acts of torture, despite the laws. Thus, if torture and ill-treatment are to be fully prohibited, the police institutions need serious reform so that their investigations conform to international standards. This would require, among others, the establishment of an independent body to probe allegations of torture involving the police. The government must also amend the Penal Code so as to do away with the statute of limitation of six months for reporting torture crimes.
Once the government is serious about carrying out an impartial and thorough investigation into the allegations of torture, many more people will come forward to lodge complaints. For this, the government must also amend the transitional justice law as per international requirements to provide effective remedies for victims of torture during the conflict era.
NEA, mend your ways
Independent power producers have vented their ire at the state-owned Nepal Electricity Authority (NEA) for the latter's failure to live up to the agreements reached with them. The NEA and the private sector have reached Power Purchase Agreement (PPA) on the "Take or Pay" model, which means the electricity buyer must pay to the seller at the fullest even if the former fails to utilise the energy bought from the private sector. Based on the Take or Pay model, almost all the power plants developed by the private sector have reached financial deals with the banks.
Now, the NEA has forced the private power producers to cut their production by almost half, citing non-completion of the transmission lines on some trunk routes. It means the private sector is compelled to sell the energy on "Take and Pay" model, not mentioned in the PPA. How can the hydropower projects pay back the loans taken from the banks if they have to sell their electricity on the take and pay model, which means the NEA will pay them only for the energy it consumes. Because of the NEA's failure to build transmission lines in time, around 500MW of energy has gone to waste, which is a huge loss not only to the private sector, but also to the nation, whose future lies in clean and green energy.
A version of this article appears in the print on June 28, 2023, of The Himalayan Times.
