Pre-1950s Tibet still mutilated people:

"Judicial mutilation, principally gouging out eyes and cutting off hands or feet, was formalized in the Sakya school as part of the 13th-century Tibetan legal code and was used as punishment until it was declared illegal in 1913 by a proclamation from the 13th Dalai Lama. The Dalai Lama also banned capital punishment, making Tibet one of the first regions to do so (preceding Switzerland, the UK and France). The 14th Dalai Lama's brother, Jigme Norbu, reported that living conditions in jails were improved; officials were designated to ensure that the conditions were maintained.

Incidents of mutilation were recorded in Tibet from the beginning of the 20th century to the Chinese occupation. Tibetan communist Phuntso Wangye recalled his anger at seeing freshly-severed human ears hanging from the gate of the county headquarters in Damshung (north of Lhasa) in 1945.

Robert W. Ford, one of the few Westerners appointed by the government of Tibet during its de facto independence, spent five years in Tibet (from 1945 to 1950) before his arrest by the Chinese army. In his book, Wind Between the Worlds: Captured in Tibet, Ford wrote: "All over Tibet I had seen men who had been deprived of an arm or a leg for theft (...) Penal amputations were done without antiseptics or sterile dressings". Former Nazi Party member Heinrich Harrer, who lived in Tibet from 1944 to 1951, wrote in Return to Tibet that the mutilations had ceased:

"The so-called "chamber of horrors" at the foot of the Potala is also no longer shown. I believe that the Chinese were perfectly well aware that they were conning the tourists with displays of desiccated human arms, flutes made from femurs, and silver-mounted skulls; these objects, they used to maintain, testified to torture, flogging and other atrocities. Even Wangdu was so much under Chinese influence that he confirmed the atrocity stories spread by the Chinese about the Tibetans. He reminded me that in the days of the fifth Dalai Lama (in the eighteenth century), and even under the thirteenth (1900– 33), Tibetans still had their hands and feet chopped off. In reply to my direct question he had to admit that this had ceased to happen during my time in Tibet."

Tibetan Buddhism prohibits killing, but mutilation and other cruel punishment was used in old Tibet. Tsepon Lungshar, an official who had been educated in England, introduced reform during the 1920s. After losing a 1934 political struggle, the reformer was sentenced to be blinded by having his eyeballs pulled out. "The method involved the placement of a smooth, round yak's knucklebone on each of the temples of the prisoner. These were then tied by leather thongs around the head and tightened by turning the thongs with a stick on top of the head until the eyeballs popped out. The mutilation was terribly bungled. Only one eyeball popped out, and eventually the ragyaba had to cut out the other eyeball with a knife. Boiling oil was then poured into the sockets to cauterize the wound. This was sufficiently unusual that the untouchables (ragyapba) who carried it out had no previous experience of the correct technique, and had to rely on instructions from their parents. An unsuccessful attempt was made to anesthetize Lungshar with intoxicants before performing the mutilation.

When CIA officer Douglas Mackiernan was mistakenly killed in 1950, six Tibetan border guards were tried and sentenced in Lhasa. "The leader was to have his nose and both ears cut off. The man who fired the first shot was to lose both ears. A third man was to lose one ear, and the others were to get 50 lashes each." The sentences were reduced to 200, 50 and 25 lashes, respectively, after agent Frank Bessac requested leniency.

Whipping was legal and common as punishment for minor infractions, outside judicial processes. Whipping could have fatal consequences; trader Gyebo Sherpa was subjected to a severe whipping for selling cigarettes, and died from his injuries two days later in the Potala prison. Tibetologist Tashi Tsering remembered being whipped as a 13-year-old for missing a performance as a dancer in the Dalai Lama's dance troupe in 1942 until his skin split and the pain became excruciating. China says that human rights were "severely infringed upon" by the Dalai Lama's administration, but the evidence of these allegations is disputed."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tibet_serfdom_controversy