Where's the international outcry?

In India, Torture by Police Is Frequent and Often Deadly

"India has the highest number of cases of police torture and custodial deaths among the world's democracies and the weakest law against torture," said Ravi Nair, who heads the South Asia Human Rights Documentation Center. "The police often operate in a climate of impunity, where torture is seen as routine police behavior to extract confessions from small pickpockets to political suspects." He said that laws governing police functions were framed under British colonial rule in 1861 "as an oppressive force designed to keep the population under control."...

Although the Indian government signed the international Convention Against Torture in 1997, it has not ratified the document. Some members of Parliament have argued against ratification, saying they oppose international scrutiny and asserting that Indian laws have adequate provisions to prevent torture...

Some police officers justify the use of torture to extract confessions and instill fear.

"The police in India are under tremendous pressure, as people need quick results. So we have to pick up and interrogate a lot of people. Sometimes things get out of control," said Raghuraj Singh Chauhan, a newly assigned officer at the station where Rajeev Sharma died. "After all, confessions cannot be extracted with love. The fear of the police has to be kept alive -- how else would you reduce crime?" he added, fanning himself with a police file folder.

A senior police officer in Meerut, on condition of anonymity, openly discussed torture methods with a visiting reporter. One technique, he said, involves a two-foot-long rubber belt attached to a wooden handle.

"We call this thing samaj sudharak," the officer said, smiling, using the Hindi phrase for social reformer. "When we hit with this, there are no fractures, no blood, no major peeling of the skin. It is safe for us, as nothing shows up in the postmortem report. But the pain is such that the person can only appeal to God. He will confess to anything."

Last September, in a written ruling in a case of police misconduct, the Supreme Court criticized the use of torture. "The dehumanizing torture, assault and death in custody which have assumed alarming proportions raise serious questions about the credibility of the rule of law and administration of the criminal justice system," the court said. "The cry for justice becomes louder and warrants immediate remedial measure."

In addition, the severity of the torture problem is probably worse than statistics indicate, because victims, fearing reprisals, rarely report cases against the police, human rights advocates said.

Emphasis mine. That is, torture is not just inhumane, it doesn't necessarily even get information.