According to the reports received, criminal suspects form a large proportion of India's torture victims. The most common purpose of torturing criminal suspects is to extract a confession or to secure information about a crime, however petty the offence and irrespective of whether a crime has actually been committed (people can be detained for trivial reasons such as "moving suspiciously" or travelling on a train without a ticket). Even children as young as six have been arrested and allegedly tortured in connection with petty criminal offences.

Other victims are people arrested for their political convictions or people arrested in connection with the situations of armed conflict that prevail in the north-east, Jammu and Kashmir, and Punjab. In these cases torture is a means of obtaining confessions and gathering information, but it is also used as a deterrent and in reprisal for attacks by armed groups. In these areas of armed opposition the security forces are empowered, under the Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act (TADA), to arrest suspects and detain them for up to one year without charge or trial, for investigation into broadly defined offences. 

The most common torture methods are severe beatings, sometimes while the victim is hung upside down, and electric shocks. People have also been crushed with heavy rollers, burned, stabbed with sharp instruments, sexually mutilated and had objects such as chilies or thick sticks forced into their rectums. Rape and ill-treatment of women by the police seems to be widespread throughout the country. In the north-east states and Jammu and Kashmir, there is a pattern of rape of women by the army and paramilitary forces for perceived support for armed insurgents. 

The police are protected from prosecution by the Code of Criminal Procedure for acts committed while on official duty. In parts of the country in which armed opposition is active, immunity from prosecution is explicitly sanctioned by specific legislation. Thus, in exercising the powers provided in the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act, currently in force in Punjab, Jammu and Kashmir, and Assam and other north-east States, the security forces are granted immunity in advance from possible prosecution. Ordinary legal safeguards do not apply. Section 6 of the Act reads: "No prosecution, suit or other legal proceeding shall be instituted, except with the previous sanction of the Central Government, against any person in respect of anything done or purported to be done in the exercise of the powers conferred by this Act". In addition, the Code of Criminal Procedure (Amendment) Bill adopted in September 1991 protects all government officers from any prosecutions for actions taken in the course of duty when a State is under direct rule from the central Government.

In addition to this, several well-established procedural techniques for evading prosecution for human rights violations provide informal but effective impunity for police and security forces throughout the country. These include the failure to register complaints, acknowledge detention or to apply other legal safeguards; denial of responsibility; falsification of judicial records and post-mortem reports, sometimes by having them carried out at police hospitals; intimidation of witnesses and complainants; and influencing police inquiries by having them conducted by police from the same branch and delaying their outcome and prosecutions. These techniques are supported by institutional practices and official policies which provide minimal sanctions against those few police or soldiers who are held accountable for custodial violence.