E/CN.4/1997/7/Add.2 page 12 41. Despite these legal safeguards, torture, including rape, in the custody of the police, paramilitary forces and the army, as well as in jails, is widely reported by national and international NGOs (see paras. 7 and 8). 42. In one well-publicized case brought to the attention of the Special Rapporteur during his mission, a detainee in a Lahore police station had been stripped naked, his hands and feet had been tied and he had been hung by them from bamboo canes. A photograph of this brutal incident appeared in a Lahore daily newspaper. The photograph clearly identifies the station house officer of the police station, shown observing uniformed police officers beating and whipping the detainee. When the Special Rapporteur brought the photograph to the attention of his interlocutors from the Ministry of Human Rights, they stated that the incident had been investigated and that the officer in question had been suspended from his position. However, they conceded that no criminal charges had been brought against either that officer nor the police officers who had inflicted the treatment. Further, the Special Rapporteur learned that the station house officer had been suspended for only a brief period and that he had resumed his duties after being transferred to a different station house. 43. In another well-publicized incident, four MQM activists under trial had been photographed on 29 May 1995 as they were brought blindfolded to the Special Court for the Suppression of Terrorist Activities in Karachi. Eyewitnesses reported that the individuals showed signs of having been severely tortured; one of the four had a drilled left buttock, another had a fractured right leg, a third had an injured left leg and hip, and the fourth had torture marks all over his body. According to press reports of the incident, the police claimed to have arrested them after an encounter on 27 May, while the counsel for the accused claimed that they had been arrested at their homes on 6 May. It was reported that the presiding officer of the Court had ordered the jail authorities to conduct a medical examination of all four and send a report to him, but the police had allegedly ignored that order and instead had taken the four to an unidentified police station. Subsequent reports received by the Special Rapporteur indicated that several low-ranking police officials had later been suspended for bringing the accused blindfolded to the Court, but the Special Rapporteur was not informed of any police investigation into the allegations of torture. 44. Reports received by the Special Rapporteur during the mission indicated that a large number of individuals had died in custody under suspicious circumstances during 1995. In the province of Sindh, excluding Karachi, there had been 62 suspicious deaths of persons held in custody. They included deaths in police custody after allegations of torture, deaths after release or transfer to hospital of which torture was suspected as the cause, deaths in fabricated police encounters, deaths in prison as a result of torture and deaths in prison due to a lack of proper medical care. In Karachi alone, it is alleged that there were approximately 200 deaths in 1995 as a result of torture in custody. 45. As noted above, the Special Rapporteur visited the central jails of Lahore and Karachi where he interviewed numerous prisoners selected at random. Although some of these interviews were held in the presence of prison officials, the conversations between the Special Rapporteur and detainees