CCPR/C/115/D/2077/2011 irreparable damage to him, and to inform the Committee on the measures taken by the State party in compliance with the request by 5 September 2011. No information was submitted to the Committee by the State party regarding such measures. 1.3 On 7 October 2011, upon the State party’s request, the Committee, acting through its Special Rapporteur on new communications and interim measures, decided that the admissibility of the communication should not be considered separately from the merits. The facts as submitted by the author 2.1 Owing to the armed conflict prevailing in the country, the State party authorities declared a state of emergency in November 2001. The ordinance of 2001 on terrorist and disruptive activities allowed State agents to arrest individuals on the basis of mere suspicion of involvement in terrorist activities, and various constitutionally granted human rights and freedoms were suspended. During the conflict, practices of torture, illegal detention, extrajudicial killing, inhuman treatment of persons in detention and enforced disappearance became common and widely used by both parties to the conflict. A number of United Nations mechanisms referred to such practices as systematic and widespread.1 Despite the end of the conflict and the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement in 2006, the practices of torture and arbitrary detention remain prevalent, in part due to the inexistence or inadequacies of laws and the weak law enforcement capacity of the penal system in general. 2.2 The author worked as a porter and cook for a trekking business in Jorpati, Kathmandu District. On 18 July 2007 at around 8.30 p.m., as the author was walking home, a group of drunken police officers approached him and asked him for a bribe. When the author refused to give them money, the officers beat him and arrested him without producing an arrest warrant or informing him of the grounds for the arrest. His wallet and mobile telephone were taken by the police officers. The author was dragged by the arms and hair to the Jorpati police station, where he was again severely beaten with bamboo sticks and kicked with boots until he lost consciousness. Approximately one hour later, a police van arrived at the station. The author was carried to the van, as he was semiconscious and could not walk, and taken to a larger police station in Kathmandu, where he was kept until around midnight. At that time, he was handcuffed and taken to the hospital to ascertain whether he was drunk. The medical report indicated that the author had been beaten with sticks all over his body and that he was in need of medical care. Despite this observation by the medical staff, the author was taken back to the same police station, where he was kept in a small and overcrowded cell with 25 other people. He was denied medical attention, food and water. He was released the following day at 6 p.m. without charges, after a large crowd asking for his release had started gathering in front of the police station where he was detained. Upon the author’s release, the Deputy Superintendent of the police station offered him money to “forget the incident” and not seek redress before the courts or make the events public. Another police officer told him not to bring the case before a court or else he would be “punished”. 2.3 A few hours after his release, at about 10 p.m., the author was admitted to the emergency ward of the Tribhuvan teaching hospital. In the report produced by the hospital it is stated that Mr. S. was affected by “pain and bruises on the whole body and extremities … caused by physical assault”. Two days later, on 25 July 2007, Mr. S. was examined at the Forensic Medicine Department of the Tribhuvan University Institute of Medicine, which issued a report on 27 July 2007 establishing that “contusions of worrying 1 The Working Group on Enforced Disappearances (see E/CN.4/2005/65/Add.1), the Special Rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment (see E/CN.4/2006/6/Add.5) and the Committee against Torture (see CAT/C/NPL/CO/2). 3