A few days ago, most of the city dailies missed a significant news item. Sixteen-year-old Anne (name changed to protect her identity) was awarded Rs 50,000 as compensation by the divisional bench of the Calcutta high court. Last year, on September 21, while Anne was being escorted to jail in a petty theft case, she was brutally raped by two policemen in the police van. Anne's trauma would have remained under wraps. On February 2, 2001, the chief of detective department submitted a report stating that Anne's allegation of rape by the policemen was 'baseless and far from the truth'. The truth took a further beating with a concerted smear campaign by the force against the hapless girl. The officer-in-charge of Alipore police station said, 'The girl is a sexual pervert and is habituated to sex. She is a paramour to a gang of dacoits'. But the police could no longer hush up the case when it was discovered that Anne was in an advanced state of pregnancy. As in a number of other cases, Anne would have become another forgotten file for 'lack of evidence'. The abuse of human rights in police custody seldom grabs the headlines unless it concerns people like the biscuit magnate, Rajan Pillai, who was denied medical aid after he was arrested and died subsequently in police custody. Anne had even less chance of drawing attention with all the odds against her. She was poor, belonged to a minority community and suffered disability from speech and hearing. The police would have got away this time too, if it were not for a number of social factors: a vigilant media, a Bengali daily (the English media were silent) immediately reported the rape. On the basis of the news report, a lawyer filed a public interest litigation in the Calcutta high court, demanding compensation for Anne; Maitree, a network of women's groups kept the pressure on the police and at the same time in the public domain by regular street-corner meetings, demonstrations and distribution of pamphlets. In some ways, Anne's incident sets out the evidence of torture and ill treatment of prisoners in West Bengal, together with the attempt to cover up these abusive practices. It also demonstrates that sections of society can provide critical safeguards in identifying abusive practices and demanding change. The pressure from various quarters compelled the state government to provide Anne with healthcare during the birth of her baby in April. The recent high court order is also a victory for public effort and an indication of a responsive and sensitive court. In principle, various sections of the criminal justice system - like public prosecutors, courts and doctors - are important agents in checking abusive custodial practices and in demanding justice. In reality, a research visit by Amnesty International delegates to West Bengal in June 1999 found that the system largely ignores gross and systematic violations by the police. This lack of interest is also largely a result of overload in the system, lack of resources, intimidation by the authorities and self-interest, as outlined in the Amnesty report released in August 2001 as part of its international campaign against the torturing of prisoners. The report, Time to act to stop torture and impunity in West Bengal, voices concerns about the ill treatment of prisoners in the state. It quotes the national human rights commission report that between 1994-96, West Bengal had the highest total recorded deaths in police custody in the country with 27 deaths. The 1998-99 annual report of the West Bengal human rights commission admitted 409 unspecified 'complaints against the police', including torture and ill treatment of a large number of people. The problem of 'overload' in the criminal justice system leads, in turn, to the manipulation of safeguards in law, set out to ensure the rights of prisoners. This is aggravated by the inadequacies in the lower courts and the prosecution service. Thousands of cases are pending before the courts and hundreds of detainees pass through dingy, crowded courtrooms, day after day. There are numerous complaints that magistrates remand detainees in police custody without detainees being physically brought before a magistrate as required by the law. Seldom is the identity of the detainee verified or information sought from the detainee about the nature of treatment in police detention. Physical injuries caused by police torture go undetected and abusive police officers go scot-free. Malpractices by other participants in the system have added to the erosion of the justice system. For instance, this is what the United Nations guidelines stipulate regarding the role of the public prosecutor: 'Persons selected as prosecutors shall be individuals of integrity and ability with appropriate training and qualifications.' But the second West Bengal police commission noted in its 1998 report that there was no system of accountability for public prosecutors. A group of lawyers told Amnesty researchers that the public prosecutors lacked professional pride in attempting to present a foolproof case. They accept 'unquestioningly' the police version of the incident and are 'pathetically dependent on them'. They rarely complain to the police about weak or conflicting evidence to prosecute a case or reject unsound witnesses; even rarer are incidences of prosecutors questioning the evidence which has been extracted from prisoners during torture. The former judge, D.K. Basu, of the Calcutta high court pointed out that it was quite normal for the police to hire witnesses in criminal cases and few public prosecutors question the use of these unlawful methods. There are alarming examples in the Amnesty report of doctors refusing to provide medical treatment to prisoners, to take note of complaints of torture or injuries from torture during post mortem investigation. Doctors are also guilty of manipulating hospital records to show that detainees were admitted and provided with medical care when, in fact, they were dead on arrival at the hospital. The WBHRC noted the case of Babi Biswas, who died in police custody on April 9, 1997, 'but an elaborate exercise was undertaken to whitewash the matter. Attempt was made (by the police) to brow beat the doctor on duty and to rearrange the hospital in a manner which would show that not merely the patient was brought to the hospital alive and breathing but that he was even administered life saving injections before he died. The silent acquiescence of the higher authorities in the arrangement is sad and sickening.' The state government took a bold step in 1995 when it set up the WBHRC, the first state in the country to do so. In 1998, the state government had announced that it had received 125 recommendations from the commission and that it had accepted them all. It is worrying that while the recommendations may be accepted in theory, they often lead to no implementation. The undue delay in courts in obtaining justice, observed the Amnesty delegates, contributes to another dangerous trend in society. People become tolerant towards police torture and violence, and accept it as a means of justice and 'instant punishment'. For similar reasons, the state cannot sideline human rights to human rights commissions only, whose strength lies in making these rights central to its policies. There is a perception among police and government officials that the maintenance of law and order and of human rights are incompatible. However, rights activists have stressed that human rights are not an impediment to effective policing; on the contrary, they are vital to the ice's achievements. If some members of the police are guilty of violating Anne, others of covering it up, there were others who had the courage to investigate their own force and book the guilty in uniform. This demonstrates the weakness of the criminal justice system, but it also shows up the potential within the system to rectify the injustice.