CAT: A Study on Bangladesh Compliance The CAT is also quite explicit concerning the cruel, inhuman and degrading punishments, which do not fall under the rubric of ‘torture’ as defined in Article 1. Article 16 (1) of the Convention stipulates that each State Party shall undertake to prevent such cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment not amounting to torture, when such acts are committed by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity. State responsibility to prevent and investigate such acts as well as to compensate the victims of such acts is also enunciated in the same Article. However, the line dividing torture, on the one hand, and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, on the other, is very thin. Many describe torture as the highest point of a continuous development, which comprises cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.20 As a result, a cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment could be considered as a form of ill treatment that is not sufficiently serious as to constitute torture. Under such a threshold, once a certain level of gravity is reached, an act qualifies as degrading treatment. Degrading treatment, when it reaches a certain severity can be re-classified as inhuman treatment which, in turn, if particularly serious can be classified as torture.21 The distinction between these concepts depends on the circumstances and on the gravity of each case. 20 21 OMCT, Save the Children (London, 2000), 13. Rahman and Islam, “Obligation of Bangladesh under Article 4 of the UN Convention Against Torture,” 126–127. 27