was living in that country, his failure to report for the examination of his first refugee claim by
the Canadian authorities on 17 August 1993, as well as the renewal of his Indian passport in
New York in 1993 which, in the State party’s view, constitutes further evidence that the
complainant does not fear Indian authorities and that he was not and is not being sought by
them.e Furthermore, the State party questions the credibility of the complainant because of the
dubious authenticity of the arrest warrant against him which had been issued two years after his
departure from India, was not supplied to the Canadian authorities before December 1996, was
typewritten lacking an official letterhead, and belonged to the type of documents which could be
easily forged or obtained for a small fee in India.
4.4
The State party also submits that the medical reports supplied by the complainant merely
confirm the existence of past injuries without providing evidence of the cause of these injuries.
Doubts are also raised by the State party with regard to the psychiatric report diagnosing
post-traumatic stress disorder which the complainant had never mentioned prior to 1999. The
State party concludes that, even if these reports corroborated the complainant’s allegation that he
had been tortured in the past, this did not occur in the recent past, the decisive issue being
whether a risk of torture continued to exist. With reference to the Committee’s jurisprudence,f
the State party submits that even though past torture is an element to be considered when
examining claims under article 3, the aim of the Committee’s examination is to find whether the
complainant would currently run a risk of torture, if returned to the country of origin.
4.5
Based on several reports on the human rights situation in India and, in particular, in the
Punjab, the State party submits that there is no consistent pattern of gross, flagrant or mass
violations of human rights in Punjab and that the situation in that province has improved over the
past years as shown by the substantial decrease of both Sikh militarism as well as the targeting of
Sikhs by the police. The State party doubts that the complainant was ever personally targeted by
the police, suggesting that his alleged detention formed part of a past practice of false arrest by
the Punjabi police with a view of obtaining a bribe. The State party further argues that only
known Sikh militants or activists may still be considered at risk of being maltreated; the
complainant, however, had never been a member of any political party or social movement.g
Taking into account that the Committee had even rejected an article 3 claim by a high-profile
Sikh militant who had been involved in the hijacking of an Indian Airlines airplane in 1981,h the
State party finds that torture cannot, in the circumstances of the present case, be considered a
foreseeable and necessary consequence of the complainant’s return to India.
4.6
With regard to the alleged violation of article 16 of the Convention, the State party argues
that this provision does not apply to the complainant’s situation because it follows from the
travaux préparatoires of the Convention that issues of deportation or expulsion are exhaustively
dealt with by article 3. The State party also submits that, according to the Committee’s
jurisprudence, “aggravation of the author’s state of health possibly caused by […] deportation
would not amount to the type of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment envisaged by article 16
of the Convention, attributable to the State party”.i Since the inability of a State to provide the
best medical care does not, in the view of the State party, constitute cruel, inhuman or degrading
treatment, the return of the complainant to India cannot constitute such treatment either, even if
his claim regarding the lack of appropriate medical treatment in India were substantiated.
4.7
In the alternative, if the complaint should be declared admissible, the State party requests
the Committee to dismiss it on the merits, based on the same reasons as set out above.
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