The Whistleblowing Couriers

CHAPTER TEN - KALA CENTRAL CARGO

Yahola swallowed the blood he had licked from his cut lip. He would have preferred to spit it onto the concrete floor, but, in his current position, the blood would have fallen into his eyes and hair. His manacled hands were tied to a circular chain hanging from the ceiling. Yahola was being hung upside down using his chafed wrists. His legs were bent, with his knees jutting out above his chin and his shackled ankles just inches above his bare anus.

Yahola had been forced to strip in a sweltering cell prior to his interrogation in an adjoining room. Noor had angrily protested the police officer's command, leading to a second officer violently beating her to the ground. As the other 'anti-nationals' in the soiled cell looked away, the pummeling continued for each minute it took for Yahola to strip. She did not cry out. Despite his broken patella, he rapidly tore off his clothes while lying on his back. Yahola finally exhaled out the pain emanating from his left leg after he shimmied out of his boxers, as he no longer heard the sound of a lathi connecting with Noor's body.

Minutes after that, he had been dragged over the feces-stained prison floor into the dimly lit interrogation cell. After being chained and hung, Yahola oscillated in the humid air. The windowless cell was about the combined size of a few bathroom stalls. A single red bulb burned near the door to the outside world. The cement walls and floor were stained with excrement, urine, and blood. There was no furniture in the room. His interrogator was dressed like one of the cops he and Noor had either wounded or killed. Just out of Yahola's line of sight, he could make out a second person wearing jeans, a black bomber jacket, and sunglasses. His interrogator asked him one question. "Where is the INA?"

Yahola refused to utter a word.

Thus, the torture commenced.

Yahola was used to torture by the American state. He knew what to expect. The torture, while barbaric, would not deviate from a list of horrors handcrafted at the highest executive levels. The torture would have been designed by medical professionals, tested on previous detainees, refined accordingly, and, through such rigorous experimentation on human beings, been approved for export. It was a disturbing comfort that, wherever in the world a person was captured by American forces, that person could be mentally prepared for the interrogation. The person knew that the interrogators would carefully adhere to a precise manual of inhumane methods that were designed to mentally and physically break a human being, but they would humanely not kill the human being. Therefore, the United States was merciful to the broken, hollow-eyed noncombatants its 'justice' system spat out into an unforgiving world.

Yahola knew he would find no such comfort in the torture meted out by the Indian state. There were no centralized directives emanating from New Delhi. Instead, there was a terrifyingly infinite list of torture possibilities, as every police officer would have free reign to use whatever methods he, she, or they deemed effective in eliciting a coerced confession out of a mangled prisoner.

Still, Yahola knew that, if given a choice of solitary confinement in MCCNY or an unknown torture concoction in a Hyderabadi prison, he would prefer no torture at all. It baffled him how, given the overwhelming evidence that torture does not work and instead produces false leads, the heinous tactic was still used. If the goal was to save lives, and a certain reprehensible method cost lives, then why were human beings continuing to suffer irreparable degradation at the hands of the state? A single snapshot of a tortured human being would enrage those who still maintained a moral compass. Those incensed individuals would either turn to the pen or the bomb. If it were the latter, then scores of civilians in the Global North would die. A single snapshot of a murdered human being would enrage those who still maintained a moral compass. Those incensed individuals would either turn to the pen or the bomb. If it were the former, then thousands of civilians in the Global South would die. And, so, the perpetual bloodshed would never cease. Was it due to ignorance or understanding of the consequences of mass murder?