THE sleepy town of Hashimara on the West Bengal-Assam border, which has an Indian Air Force (IAF) base 20 km away, makes for an unlikely centre of controversy. A spate of petitions have been filed before the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) and the Delhi High Court alleging the use of the air base as a torture camp to interrogate technical officers and airmen who dared to protest against the discrepancies in salary between pilots and technical staff after the flying allowance for the former was raised last year.