Torture occurs during the first 24 hours of arrest before a person is produced in court. There are informal detention and special interrogation centres where torture is common. What is difficult is a person remanded to police custody is not documented. Going by the experiences in India, I emphasize that the repressive culture built and entrenched in the law enforcement agencies should be democratised and humanised. The media can play a seminal role through properly investigated stories.
Civil society plays an important role as it has done in India and in other countries of South Asia.
The visiting mechanism exists in the form of officials and lay persons visits. Judges and medical officers visit prisons. Similarly friends and relatives visit jails. But police stations where torture occurs to extract confessions are not generally accessible. The visiting mechanism enshrined in the Draft Optional to the Convention against Torture is very relevant.