India, June 26 -- June 26 is International Torture Survivors Day. But P Jayaraj and, his son, J Bennix did not survive. Five years ago this month, they died from torture in police custody. Since then, others have too.

Jayaraj and Bennix were aged 59 and 31. They ran a small mobile accessories shop in Sathankulam, in Tamil Nadu's Thoothukudi district. On June 19, 2020, during the Covid-19 lockdown, police picked them up on the pretext that they had kept the shop open a little beyond permissible hours. Three days later, both were dead.

The postmortem report documents the savagery at the police station: Batons were shoved into their anuses; the father was kicked repeatedly in the chest with heavy shoes; the flesh on their buttocks was enti...