A defiant Senator Leila De Lima on Tuesday accused the Duterte administration of using psychological torture on inmates to force them to fabricate false testimonies against her.

De Lima said she received "credible" reports that inmates and gang leaders were being taken by personnel of the Special Action Force (SAF) for overnight interrogations.

"[This] can also be a euphemism for psychological torture. I am referring to the overnight interrogations all in an effort to fabricate testimony that I have received bribes from drug lords," De Lima said during a privilege speech at the Senate on Tuesday.

Several inmates testified at a House probe on Tuesday that De Lima received millions in drug payoffs when she was still head of the justice department.

But the former justice secretary said these prisoners are just being forced into implicating her in the illegal drugs trade.

"The New Bilibid Prison under this administration is now a tropical gulag...prisoners are being selected and isolated just to be intimidated into implicating me and to fit the President's narrative that I am a drug coddler aside from being the most evil woman in the planet," she said, adding that the Commission on Human Rights should look into the reports.

President Rodrigo Duterte had accused De Lima's former driver and bodyguard of being her link to convicted drug lords, who were supposedly allowed to run their illegal operations from detention during her time at the justice department.

Duterte even told De Lima to resign or hang herself.

The senator however remained defiant even after the Senate stripped her of chairmanship of the Senate Committee on Justice.

"It would take more than a committee chairmanship, a House inquiry intended to pillory and crucify me, an ethics committee complaint based on hearsay, a baseless election protest everyday or almost every day tirades from the secretary of justice and even the solicitor general and vicious personal attacks from the President to take me down," she said.

"Wag na po ninyong ituloy mahal na pangulo dahil mapapahiya lamang po kayo," she added.