Committee
Kittee ( Hindi किट्टी Kiṭṭī, Telugu Cheerata ) is a term that appears several times in colonial documents of the Madras Presidency of the British East India Company for a torture device or torture method used to extort confessions from the police or levies from local tax collectors (Tahsildar , see also Tehsil ) was used.
It is a bamboo stick split at one end , into the open end of which a part of the body, for example a hand, was pressed and which was then used as a clamp, in effect similar to a thumb screw or Spanish boot . The use of torture also appears in the so-called Madras Commission Report of 1855, where an eyewitness reports that the women of peasants who were in default of taxation were tortured on the breasts with the device.
Individual evidence
- ^ Minutes of Evidence Taken Before the Select Committee on the Affairs of the East India Company . Appendix & Index, Vol. IV. House of Commons , London 1832, p. 115, digitized
- ^ Report of the Commissioners for the Investigation of Alleged Cases of Torture in the Madras Presidency. Fort St George Gazette Press, Madras 1855, p. 161. See also Torture in India by British Government Officials. In: The Colonist , Ed. 41, March 12, 1858, p. 4, online