Malaya Ghosh's torture account, 64 Days in Lal Bazar, ends with the recollection of a journey that she made on her 64th day in police custody. Sometime in the afternoon, she sensed a finality in the absurd and horrifying proceedings at Lal Bazar when Runu Guha Niyogi forced her to sign on documents which falsely incriminated her, and when an inspector outside the torture chamber sought her forgiveness. She could not refuse either. Utterly exhausted, dirty and dishevelled, she was forced to sit between a couple of policemen in a private car. In the gathering dusk, fear gripped her as she did not know where the car was taking her. Anxiety and apprehension overcame her when she saw the familiar police hospital. But no, the car went beyond and came to a halt before the main gate of Presidency Jail, and she saw the brightly lit gate. Her entire being filled with happiness and she felt liberated. She wondered how anyone could feel so happy on entering a jail as life behind the high walls is known to be difficult. So, why was she so happy? (M. Ghosh 2011: 46–49).

The end of torture is the triumph of surviving the bare life that one is reduced to, and Ghosh's sense of elation strikes the right chord. But the temporality of her freedom raises a question: Is torture only confined to police lock-ups? Ghosh could not have known then, but she did when she wrote her account that jail was not a safe and secure haven for non-MISA Naxalites who were periodically taken to Lal Bazar and tortured under new cases and re-sent. For these women, jail life was marked with fear and uncertainty about possible police attacks. Besides, the quotidian realities of captivity are well defined within forms and structures of violence and deprivation: ruthless separation from society, loneliness of confinement, violence and insanity of fellow inmates, and the brutality of penal regime. The punitive measures of time and space, the elongation of time and the emptiness of space are added burdens.