E/CN.4/1995/34 page 100 Pakistan Information transmitted to the Government 515. By letter dated 21 July 1994 the Special Rapporteur informed the Government that he had continued to receive reports indicating that torture in the custody of the police, the paramilitary and the armed forces was endemic, widespread and systematic. Torture was said to be used by police to gain information, to obtain confessions, or to intimidate or punish detainees, and often resulted in death. Torture was reportedly practised against persons detained for political reasons, criminal suspects, and persons from whom police sought to extract a bribe. 516. The methods of torture reported included prolonged blindfolding; prolonged enforced standing; beatings with sticks and leather truncheons (the chittar); pulling the legs apart painfully (cheera); passing rollers over and beating the genitalia; burnings with cigarettes; application of electric shocks, frequently to the temples, knees, and genitalia; drilling with electric drills into the bone; hanging the body upside down for prolonged periods; being dragged through the streets by a vehicle; food and sleep deprivation; subjection to mock executions; and rape. 517. On the way from police detention to a magistrate, detainees were said frequently to be threatened with further torture to dissuade them from revealing to the magistrate that they had been subjected to torture. Police were said seldom to investigate complaints of torture, even when under a court order to do so, and trials of officials accused of torture were rare. In the case of torture committed by members of the armed forces in Sindh province, the difficulty of prosecution was said to be exacerbated by a presidential ordinance which granted immunity from criminal prosecution to army personnel for any action undertaken "in good faith" during the law and order operations in that province. Medical officials were often pressured into issuing false medical reports so as to obscure the role of torture in the injuries or death of detainees. 518. The individual cases described in the following paragraphs were also communicated to the Government. 519. Ghulam Mustafa Soomro was reportedly arrested and beaten on 7 December 1992 by 10 to 12 members of the paramilitary Rangers, Kurram Militia, at his home in Sita Road, Sindh province. He was then blindfolded and brought for interrogation to the Kharipur Natanshah Ranger camp where the commanding officer and other Rangers allegedly beat him with sticks and leather whips until he fainted. Later, he was allegedly tied with ropes around his ankles and wrists at the back, hanged by those ropes from the ceiling, and simultaneously beaten on the legs and soles of the feet until he vomited. A medical officer of the Rangers reportedly gave him an injection of an unknown substance. After several days of continuous interrogations and beatings he was on 16 December taken to the Sita Road marketplace and, along with four other prisoners, stripped naked, and had his moustache and hair shaved off. The five men had their hands tied with ropes hitched to an army pick-up van and they were dragged through the main streets of the Sita Road area. They allegedly were forced to run to avoid falling down and being