This is humiliation, torture and crime-violates both national and international law

This is not a ficticious story but a real incident which has occured near Khipro, district Sanghar, Sindh, Pakistan. Three young people were beaten, tortured on a issue of liking girls of the village. According to the reports three young persons were stripped off their clothes and tortured on suspicion of liking girls of the local village. Influential people took tem to a place where their heads and eye brows were also shaved. This is not an isolated incident but it has become a trend in our society where people start doing their own justice and humiliate the accused on the basis of mere suspicion.

Heads and eye brows were shaven as a punishment

 The Constitution of Pakistan guarantees the rights of the citizens and does not allow any such action against anybody which humiliates a human being. Under international law such practices are counted as torture and fall under the purview of the Convention Against Torture to which Pakistan is a party. Its article 1 defines torture as, “ an 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.”

The Government of Pakistan, police, law enforcement agency and judiciary must take immediate notice of such actions and make sure the perpetrators are held accountable and people are not punished for crimes which they have not done or they are punished on the basis of mere suspicion and people make their own judgements.