A Critical Study of Torture in
Chandrakumar’s Lock-Up, a Novel and Vetrimaaran’s Visaranai,
a Film
Raja M
ABSTRACT
Torture is one of the practices used by the state
to extract information and a confession from the victims under war
trials. This paper is an attempt to explore torture and analyses the
relationships between the state and torture, torturer and the
victims, and the experience of pain and the emotions that arise from
this in the Tamil novel, Lock-Up (2017) by Chandrakumar and
Visaranai (2016), its film adaptation by Vetrimaran. How does the
state act as the producer of torture as well as the regulatory
authority in all forms of government? How does a modern secular and
liberal state, as in India, use torture as a tool to extract the
information or confession from the victims in the name of democracy?
The present paper seeks to respond to these questions.
Key words: Modern State, Lock-Up, Torturer, Victims, Torture,
Democracy, Secular, Pain, Fear, Darkness.
