CCPR/C/126/D/2773/2016 which provides that no child shall be engaged in work as a labourer against her or his will by way of persuasion, misrepresentation or by subjecting her or him to any influence or threat or coercion or by any other means; (b) section 14 of the State Cases Act, which provides that police personnel conducting an investigation related to any crime may arrest a person if there is reasonable grounds to suspect her or his involvement in a crime and that the arrested person shall be informed about the cause of the arrest; and (c) the bill on torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, which is under consideration by the Legislature Parliament in order to amend the national Penal Code, 14 which criminalizes torture and defines it as a punishable crime in line with the Convention against Torture, providing that the perpetrators of torture receive a punishment of a maximum of five years’ imprisonment or must pay a fine of 50,000 Nepalese rupees (approximately $500), or both, and providing for 500,000 Nepalese rupees (approximately $5,000) in compensation to victims of torture. Author’s comments on the State party’s observations on admissibility and the merits 5.1 In his comments of 9 November 2017, the author notes that the fact that it took the State party more than a year to submit its observations on the present communication is another sign of the indifference of Nepal vis-à-vis his acute suffering. 5.2 Regarding the State party’s allegation of the lack of exhaustion of domestic remedies, the author recalls that the Committee has clearly established that domestic remedies must be exhausted when they appear to be effective in a given case, are de facto available to the author and objectively offer a prospect of success. 15 The author claims that none of the remedies referred to by the State party in its observations meet those requirements. He also claims that all the remedies he pursued in order to obtain justice and reparation proved ineffective. 5.3 The author confirms that he did not lodge an appeal against the decision of the Kathmandu District Court finding that he should not be further detained or pay the fine, because he and his family lacked the financial resources to lodge an appeal, given that they were indigent, as shown by the fact that they could not even afford to pay his bail. The author refers to advisory opinion OC-11/90 of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights: If a person who is seeking the protection of the law in order to assert rights … finds that his economic status, prevents him from so doing because he cannot afford either the necessary legal counsel or the costs of the proceedings, that person is being discriminated against by reason of his economic status and, hence, is not receiving equal protection before the law. … Any State that does not provide indigents with such counsel free of charge cannot therefore later assert that appropriate remedies existed but were not exhausted. … [If] legal services are required either as a matter of law or fact in order for a right … to be recognized and a person is unable to obtain such services because of his indigency, then that person would be exempted from the requirement to exhaust domestic remedies.16 Moreover, the author argues that lodging an appeal against the decision would not have led to the opening of an investigation into his allegations concerning torture and forced labour nor to his being compensated for the damages suffered. The author claims that such a remedy was not effective in his case. 14 15 16 8 In 2018, the State party amended its Criminal Code, including with regard to the criminalization and definition of torture under section 167 of the Code. The author refers, inter alia, to the Views of the Committee in Benaziza v. Algeria (CCPR/C/99/D/1588/2007), para. 8.3, and Ondracka and Ondracka v. Czech Republic, (CCPR/C/91/D/1533/2006), para. 6.3. Inter-American Court of Human Rights, Exceptions to the Exhaustion of Domestic Remedies, Advisory Opinion OC-11/90, 10 August 1990, paras. 22, 26 and 36.