When you read stuff like this, it makes you wonder, what is it about us – as a species – makes us tend towards such cruelty.

A teenage girl was beaten to death by her own family after being forced to live under a strict regime in which she was made to lick the toilet bowl and eat her own faeces, a court has heard.

Her own family. And, then you read about those child abuse cases. A two year old and a five year old, gang raped in separate cases in Delhi. And a voice in your head whispers – this is just the reported and discovered ones. This is the tip of the tip of the iceberg. How many more go unreported. And, you wonder about people and their innate capacity to cause hurt, and pain – deliberately. Violent physical pain. And, get pleasure out of it.

Were these the types to run concentration camps, a part of me wonders. Were these the types who knitted on when fellow citizens (albeit nobility) were having their heads chopped off in the guillotine; were these the types who manned Gitmo or the Gulag; what kind of sub species of human is this? Or is this innate, and the rest of us curb our inner demons better?

It is comforting to think the former – a sub-species. The great fear is that it may be the latter.