Torture - Definition - Law Dictionary Home Dictionary Definition torture

Definition :

Torture, an account of this atrocious expedient may be found in the Encyclop'dia Britannica (tit. 'Torture'). Reference may also be made to Jardine's Reading on the Use of Torture in the Criminal Law of England previously to the Commonwealth (1837), and an article by Mr. Wyatt Paine in the Law Times of January 28th, 1905, at p. 294, where attention is directed to the preamble of the Act for Pirates, 27 Hen. 8, c. 4 (repealed by the (English) Statute Law Revision Act, 1863).

The infliction of intense pain to body or mind to punish; to extract a confession or information, or to obtain sadistic pleasure, Black's Law Dictionary, 7th Edn., p. 1498.

Torture is strictly the infliction of gradually increasing pain for the purpose of extracting confession, or accusation, but it is also used in the secondary sense of those 'cruel and unusual punishments' which, by the Bill of Rights of 1688, 'ought not to be inflicted.' The peine forte et dure (see that title) is also a kind of torture in the primary sense. All three kinds have long been obsolete in English law, and the better opinion is that torture in the primary sense is wholly illegal in England as declared by the judges in 1628, when it was proposed to torture Felton, the assassin of Buckingham, to make him disclose his accomplices. It was , however, frequently the practice to torture by virtue of Royal Warrant, a warrant of 1640, for instance (Jardine, p. 108), directing the Lieutenant of the Tower 'to cause John Archer to be carried to the rack and that there yourself,' with two named 'serjeants-at-lawe, shall examine him upon such questions as our said serjeants shall think fit to propose to him.' It was abolished in Scotland by 7 Anne, c. 21, s. 8.

Torquenmada in the Inquisition frequently employed torture, and it was only in 1816 that it was abolished by Papal Bull. See Encycl. Brit., ubi sup., sub-tit. 'The Chuch.'

In Athens the torture was applied to slaves. Aristotle was in favour of it. In Rome, under the Republic, only slaves could be tortured, but under the Empire it was applied to freemen in cases of l'sa majestas. Cicero (pro Sulla, c. 28) emphatically denounced it as leaving no place for truth, and Seneca as forcing even the innocent to lie.

Under British rule torture is universally acknow-ledged to have been a most unsatisfactory mode of getting the truth, often leading the innocent through weakness to plead guilty to crimes they had not committed. See also AIR 2001 SC 2124.

Torture, is essentially an instrument to impose the Will of the 'strong' over the 'weak' by suffering, D.K. Basu v. State of West Bengal, AIR 1997 SC 610: (1997) 1 SCC 416: (1997) 1 JT SC 1: (1997) 2 Guj LR 1631 SC: (1997) Cr LJ 743: (1997) 1 Cur Cr R 81 SC.