The US Senate Intelligence Committee’s report on torture by the CIA, published earlier this month, was reported faithfully by the Indian media. But unlike the West, where the issue has rocked the system and is being debated and discussed in great detail, the story in India has quickly moved on.

The reason is not too difficult to see. Torture is routine in India. From the thana policeman investigating petty theft, to the intelligence officer interrogating a suspected terrorist, no one thinks twice about it. India has signed the UN Convention on Torture in 1997, but has yet to ratify it. But it is party to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), which prohibits torture and other forms of cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment, and it has also ratified the four Geneva Conventions of 1949, whose Common Article 3 applies to internal conflict and prohibits murder, torture and ill-treatment of non-combatants by both the government and the militant forces. But all this matters little.